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Hot Potato Salad

A potato salad with bacon, onion, vinegar, and spices, tossed in hot bacon fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Hot Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Fry the bacon in a pan until light brown, then strain out the bacon.

  2. In the same fat, fry the chopped onion until softened.

  3. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the vinegar, salt, sugar, and cayenne until emulsified.

  4. Return the pan to heat and add the boiling water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the hot diced potatoes and bacon to the pan, tossing gently to coat.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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 body of the salad, absorbing the warm dressing as they stay hot.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky flavor and fat that carries into the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar and fat.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth when softened in the bacon fat.

The step that matters

Add the potatoes while everything is hot. Hot potatoes absorb the warm, acidic dressing far better than cold ones, so tossing them in promptly lets them soak up flavor. Letting the dressing cool or separate can leave the potatoes bland and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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