Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Potato Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the potatoes
Boil the potatoes until tender, then remove the skins.
Cut the potatoes into fairly thick slices and place them in a deep dish.
Make and add the dressing
In a bowl, beat the hard-boiled egg yolks, then add pepper, salt, butter, and milk until the mixture is the consistency of thin cream.
Pour the dressing over the potatoes.
Sprinkle with minced parsley and add crushed onion and garlic if desired.
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.
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together29,058 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together34,122 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,023 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,517 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,308 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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 dressing as they are sliced and tender.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Beaten into the dressing to give it a rich, creamy body.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the dressing, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
- Milk
- Thins the yolk mixture to a pourable cream consistency that coats the potatoes.
The step that matters
Beating the yolks with butter and milk to a thin cream. Egg yolks and butter emulsify into a smooth dressing only when they are beaten well and combined gradually with the milk. Stopping early leaves a lumpy dressing that coats the potatoes unevenly.
Swap the onion
The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, pepper, butter, milk, parsley, garlic):
- Chivefits better
- Spinachfits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, pepper, butter, milk, parsley, garlic. 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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