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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with a vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg, and optional onion or cucumber dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 the potatoes

  1. Cut the potatoes into small pieces.

  2. Finely chop the fresh onion or cucumber and mix with the potatoes.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, eggs, dry mustard, pepper, and salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  2. If the dressing is too thick, add a little cream once cooled.

Combine and rest

  1. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and let sit for 1 to 2 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 absorb the tangy dressing as they rest.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar, adding gentle sweetness to the dressing.
Dry mustard
Adds a pungent, savory bite that rounds out the vinegar and egg flavors.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the egg proteins from scrambling. Once they set, the mixture thickens smoothly into a dressing that coats the potatoes.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, vinegar, sugar, egg, mustard, pepper, cream):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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