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Potato Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes mixed with onion, celery, parsley, and a dressing of egg, sugar, mustard, butter, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender. Peel and let them cool.

  2. Cut the cooled potatoes into small pieces.

  3. Mix in the chopped onion, celery, and parsley.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, beat the egg and add sugar, mustard, butter, salt, milk, and vinegar.

  2. Cook the dressing over low heat until thick, stirring constantly.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the potato mixture and mix well.

  2. Cool the salad and serve it on a bed of lettuce leaves, garnished with sliced 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 and soft texture.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it a creamy, sliceable body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Milk
Dilutes the dressing and adds mild creaminess as it thickens.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing over low heat until thick, stirring constantly. The egg proteins in the dressing can scramble and curdle if the heat is too high or the mixture is left unstirred. Gentle heat with constant stirring lets the egg thicken the liquid smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, parsley, egg, sugar, mustard, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, parsley, egg, sugar, mustard, butter. 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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