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Potato Salad

A chilled potato salad with boiled potatoes, celery, hard‑boiled eggs, optional beet, and a creamy dressing made from eggs, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 the dressing

  1. For the dressing, beat 4 eggs lightly in a double boiler.

  2. Add sugar, salt, red pepper, mustard, sweet cream, and vinegar to the eggs.

  3. Cook the mixture in the double boiler until it thickens.

Layer the salad

  1. Slice fresh boiled potatoes into small bits while still warm.

  2. Layer potatoes in a dish, sprinkle with celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add a layer of sliced hard-boiled eggs and a little more salt and pepper.

  4. If desired, add diced cold boiled beet for color.

  5. Drizzle a liberal amount of dressing over each layer and continue until the dish is filled.

Chill

  1. Allow the salad to stand in a cool place for 24 hours before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Cooked into the dressing, where they thicken it to a creamy consistency.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening its sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and mustard in the dressing.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and soak up the dressing as it stands.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until it thickens. Eggs thicken when heated gently; if the heat is too high or the mixture is left too long, the eggs can scramble and curdle. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle and even.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

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