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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with mustard, salt, anchovy essence, onion, oil, vinegar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pass the boiled potatoes through a sieve.

  2. Add mustard, salt, essence of anchovy, and finely chopped onion to the potatoes.

  3. Mix in the oil, vinegar, and pounded yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  4. Stir thoroughly before serving.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 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

Potatoes
Form the body of the salad, with a soft, smooth texture once sieved.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the potato and giving a silkier mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping bind the dressing to the potato.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Mix in the oil, vinegar, and yolks. Adding the oil gradually while mixing helps it emulsify with the yolks and vinegar; if added too fast or unevenly, the dressing can separate and look greasy rather than creamy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, anchovy, onion, vinegar, egg):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, anchovy, onion, vinegar, egg. 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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German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

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