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Irish Potato Salad

A salad of sliced Irish potatoes, hard‑boiled eggs, and a mustard‑vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the cold Irish potatoes and cut them into thin, round slices.

  2. Hard-boil the eggs, then mash the yolks in a bowl.

Make and serve

  1. Mix the mashed yolks with vinegar, mustard, coarse sea salt, and a pinch of sugar.

  2. Place the potato slices in a salad dish and pour the sauce over them.

  3. Garnish with the egg whites cut into rings.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold irish potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, holding their shape as sliced rounds.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mash into a rich, creamy base; whites add a mild, firm garnish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy yolk sauce and balances richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its bite.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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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