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Potato Salad

A salad of warm, peeled potatoes mixed with vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and optional herbs, served chilled on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Cook the potatoes with their jackets on until tender.

  2. Peel and cut them while still warm.

Dress and chill

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the potatoes with a little hot water or broth.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and for every tablespoon of vinegar, add four tablespoons of olive oil.

  3. Add any optional ingredients like onion, parsley, chives, or celery and toss gently.

  4. Chill in the refrigerator before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve in individual lettuce leaves or a salad bowl lined with lettuce, garnished with a spoonful of boiled dressing.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Waxy yellow potatoes
Hold their shape when cut and absorb dressing well without turning mushy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat and carries flavor, coating the potato pieces for a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while still warm. Warm potatoes are porous and absorb the vinegar, oil and seasoning far better than cold ones, so the flavor penetrates instead of sitting on the surface. Cutting and dressing them while warm gives a more evenly seasoned salad.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley, chive, celery):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley, chive, celery. 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.

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