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Hot Potato Salad

A warm potato salad with bacon, onions, vinegar, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hot Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash, peel, and boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain and cut the potatoes into thin crosswise slices.

  3. Mix the sliced potatoes with the chopped onions and keep warm.

Make the bacon dressing

  1. Cut the bacon into half-inch pieces and fry until light brown.

  2. Remove the bacon and reserve it.

  3. In the hot bacon grease, stir in the vinegar and add white pepper to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the sauce with the bacon and potatoes, then serve hot.

  2. Add minced parsley if desired.

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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 hold their shape when sliced and boiled until tender.
Bacon
Supplies fat for the dressing and savory, browned flavor to the salad.
Onions
Add sharp, aromatic flavor that mellows as the salad sits warm.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness of the bacon fat and brightens the dressing.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar to the hot bacon grease. The fat must be hot when the vinegar goes in so it sizzles and blends into a warm, emulsified dressing. Adding it to cooled fat gives a greasy, unbalanced sauce that does not coat the potatoes well.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, vinegar, white 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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