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Potato Salad

A chilled salad of boiled potatoes mixed with mustard, olive oil, vinegar, anchovy sauce, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled potatoes into small pieces.

  3. Pass the potatoes through a sieve into a bowl.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix mustard, salt, olive oil, vinegar, egg yolks, onion, and anchovy sauce.

  2. Combine the mixture with the potatoes and mix well.

  3. Garnish with parsley and sliced hard-boiled egg.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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 once boiled and mashed.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and mustard, giving the dressing a rich, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour and helping bind the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing with the oil and yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Combine the mixture with the potatoes and mix well. Emulsified dressing is easily broken if overworked or added too quickly, and uneven mixing leaves pockets of dressing or bland potato. Mixing gently until the dressing is evenly coated keeps the salad creamy and consistent throughout.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, olive, vinegar, egg, onion, anchovy, sauce. 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.

More potato salad recipes

German 31Hot 19Dressing 17Anchovy 15French 10American 9 See all 504 →

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