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Salad

Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, sweet onion, sweet peppers, and a creamy lemon mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the boiled potatoes and finely chop the onion.

  2. Season the potatoes and onion with salt and pepper, then mix well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream and lemon juice, beating rapidly.

  2. Stir in the mustard, sugar, and celery seed until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the chopped sweet peppers and cayenne pepper to the potato mixture.

  2. Mix everything together and garnish with sliced eggs and parsley sprigs.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 provide its starchy, hearty body.
Sweet thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, coating the potatoes in a creamy dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the cream and sugar.
Mustard
Contributes sharp flavour and helps emulsify the creamy dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon and mustard.
Sweet onion
Provides sharp aromatic flavour that cuts through the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Beating the cream and lemon juice. Cream thickens as it is beaten, but acid from lemon juice can cause it to curdle or separate if overbeaten. Beating steadily and stopping once smooth keeps the dressing light and cohesive.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, cream, lemon, mustard, sugar, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, cream, lemon, mustard, sugar, 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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