Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: boiled chicken, cut into ¾ inch pieces; celery, cut into ¾ inch pieces; mayonnaise; whipped cream (optional); crisp lettuce; olives, for garnish; radishes, for garnish; hard boiled eggs, for garnish; nasturtiums, for garnish

Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Once the boiled chicken is cold, cut it into ¾ inch pieces.
If the chicken will sit for a while, place it in a bowl and cover with a damp napkin.
Cut the celery into ¾ inch pieces and place it in a bowl of cold water if it will sit.
Mix the salad just before serving to maintain freshness.
For added flavor, mix a little whipped cream into the mayonnaise.
Serve the salad on crisp lettuce, garnished with olives, radishes, slices of hard boiled eggs, and nasturtiums.

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.

Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Celery + radishtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together101 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

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

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

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, cream, lettuce, olive, egg):

Spinachfits better
Mustardfits better
Leekfits better
Radishthe original

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