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Chicken Salad

A chilled chicken salad with French dressing, celery, mayonnaise, lettuce, and optional grapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Steam the chicken until tender, then let it cool.

  2. Remove the skin and bones, and cut the meat into cubes.

  3. Mix the chicken with French dressing and marinate for 1 hour.

Prepare the celery

  1. Cover the sliced celery with ice until ready to use.

  2. Drain and dry the celery.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine 1 part celery with 2 parts chicken.

  2. Mix the celery with the chicken and mayonnaise.

  3. If desired, add grapes to the mixture.

  4. Garnish with crisp lettuce leaves.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + grapetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Celery + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Chicken + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein; steaming until tender keeps the meat moist and easy to cube.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise
Binds the salad and adds richness and moisture.
Grapes
Add a light sweetness and juiciness to the salad.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the celery. Excess surface water from the ice-chilled celery would dilute the mayonnaise and make the salad watery, so it should be fully dried before mixing.

Swap the grape

The recipe marks grape as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, lettuce. 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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