Skip to main content
Salad

German Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with pork fat, vinegar, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

German Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes with skins on; when cold, peel and slice them onto a platter.

  2. Fry the diced pork fat in a pan until golden brown and crisp, then remove and set aside.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, gently mix the sliced potatoes with the hot pork fat, then add salt, pepper, onion, parsley, and vinegar.

  2. Finally, add the crisp pieces of pork just before serving.

  3. Serve the salad cold, mixing only right before you want to eat.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 absorb the fat and vinegar dressing.
Pork fat
Adds rich flavour and coats the potatoes, while the crisp pieces add texture.
Strong vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich pork fat and balances the flavour.
Onion
Contributes sharp, pungent aroma and a bit of bite.

The step that matters

Dress the potatoes while they are still warm. Warm potatoes are porous and absorb the hot fat and vinegar well, so flavour penetrates them. Cold potatoes stay bland on the surface. Adding the crisp pork just before serving keeps it from going soft in the dressing.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, vinegar, pepper, potato, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, vinegar, pepper, potato, onion. 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