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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, bacon, onion, mayonnaise, vinegar, salt, pepper, and parsley.

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

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes while hot.

  3. Cut the bacon into small dice.

  4. Fry the bacon until nicely browned.

  5. Drain the bacon well from fat.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the sliced potatoes, bacon, and onion.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir in the mayonnaise and vinegar.

  4. Mix carefully to avoid breaking the potatoes.

  5. Serve in a salad bowl, sprinkled with parsley.

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

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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, providing starchy body and a soft, tender texture when boiled.
Bacon
Adds savoury, browned flavour and fat from frying that carries seasoning through the salad.
Mayonnaise
Binds the salad and adds richness and moisture, coating the potato pieces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the mayonnaise and bacon.

The step that matters

Mix carefully to avoid breaking the potatoes. Hot-cooked potato pieces are fragile and break down easily when stirred hard. Gentle folding keeps the slices intact, so the salad looks neat and keeps its texture instead of turning mushy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, sauce, vinegar, pepper. 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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