Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A salad of cold boiled chicken, celery, cucumbers, hard‑boiled eggs, olives, and beet, dressed with mayonnaise or chicken salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Almond and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled chicken into bits the size of a shelled almond.

  2. Soak the cleaned celery in ice water for at least 1 hour, then wipe and cut it thinly.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Mix the celery and cucumbers with the chicken and your choice of dressing.

  2. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs, celery leaves, or lettuce hearts.

  3. Add olives and small stars or diamonds cut from boiled beet for decoration.

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. Almond + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Celery + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Almond + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and substance.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that stays firm when soaked in ice water and thinly cut.
Chicken salad dressing or mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness that binds the chicken and vegetables together.
Cucumbers
Adds cool, watery crunch that contrasts with the rich dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds soft, creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Soaking the celery in ice water. Soaking for at least an hour in ice water firms and crisps the celery's cell structure, so it stays crunchy instead of limp once dressed.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, almond, cucumber, egg, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, almond, cucumber, egg, olive. 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 chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes