Skip to main content
Main

Potato Salad

A chilled salad of mashed potato, cabbage, pickles, egg yolks, and a vinegar‑butter dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 722 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Rub the mashed potato through a colander.

  2. Mix in the shredded cabbage, chopped cucumber or pickle, minced onion, and pounded egg yolks.

Make and add the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, combine boiling vinegar, melted butter, sugar, beaten egg, flour, celery essence, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook and stir the dressing until smooth, then mix it hot with the salad.

  3. Toss the salad thoroughly and chill until ready to serve.

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. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  4. Potato + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Mashed potato
Forms the body of the salad and absorbs the dressing.
Raw egg
Thickens the hot dressing as it cooks, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Boiling vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness of the dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the salad.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it clings to the salad.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing. The raw egg and flour must be cooked and stirred until smooth. Heat sets the egg proteins and gelatinizes the flour, thickening the dressing. Stopping too early leaves it thin, and overheating can curdle the egg.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cucumber, egg, vinegar, butter, sugar, flour. 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 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes