Skip to main content
Salad

Potato Salad with Bacon

A potato salad made with boiled potatoes, bacon, onion, vinegar, oil, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain the potatoes and let them cool slightly.

  3. Remove the skin and slice the potatoes into thin pieces.

Make and combine

  1. In a skillet, cut the bacon into small cubes and fry with butter until golden.

  2. Add the warm bacon to the sliced potatoes.

  3. Pour vinegar, oil, onion, salt, and sugar over the potatoes and mix carefully.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and hold the dressing between their slices.
Bacon
Adds savory, browned fat and smoky flavor that carries through the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the fat and sweetness.
Oil
Adds fat that coats the potato slices and gives a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mix the warm bacon into the potatoes. Warm potatoes absorb the vinegar, oil and seasoning more readily than cold ones, so the dressing spreads evenly. Mixing gently keeps the thin slices from breaking apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, vinegar, sugar, butter):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, vinegar, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes