Name: Dressing for Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 7 hard-boiled eggs; 2 raw eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately; ¼ cup salad oil; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon prepared mustard; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper; Celery to taste; Lettuce leaves (hearts only, if in season); Juice of 2 lemons

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dressing for Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix with the beaten raw egg yolks and whites.
Add the salad oil, salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.
Stir in celery to taste.
Serve over 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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper, celery, lettuce):

Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, celery, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.