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Potato Salad

A dressing of flour, butter, milk, vinegar, eggs, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, onions, poured over thinly sliced potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine flour, butter, and sweet milk in a saucepan and boil together well.

  2. Add vinegar, beaten eggs, mustard, sugar, salt, red pepper, and chopped onions.

  3. Boil all together, stirring constantly, until thick like cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the thinly sliced potatoes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the dressing along with the eggs as it boils.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Potatoes
Form the base of the salad that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Boil the dressing until thick, stirring constantly. Eggs and flour thicken the mixture as it heats, but eggs can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, vinegar, egg, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, vinegar, egg, sugar, pepper. 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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