Name: Potato Salad
Ingredients: 4 large potatoes; a little vinegar; pepper; coarse sea salt; 3 hard-boiled eggs; ½ small onion, minced; 2 cucumbers, diced; cooked dressing

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the potatoes until tender, then dice them.
Pour a little vinegar over the diced potatoes and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Dice the hard-boiled eggs, minced onion, and cucumbers.

Assemble

Mix all ingredients together and pour over the cooked dressing.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 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 and hold their shape once boiled and diced.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add creamy richness and body to the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the potatoes and balances the richer dressing.
Cucumbers: Contribute moisture and a crisp, cooling texture.
Onion: Adds sharp aroma and pungency.

Swap the potato

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

Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Mustardfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, egg, onion, cucumber. 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.