Name: Chicken Salad with Mayonnaise Dressing
Ingredients: 4 cooked chickens, meat pulled from bones; 2 to 4 quarts mayonnaise dressing; 1 gallon fine olive oil; capers (for decoration); olives (for decoration); quartered eggs (for decoration)

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad with Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

4 cooked chickens, meat pulled from bones
2 to 4 quarts mayonnaise dressing
1 gallon fine olive oil
capers (for decoration)
olives (for decoration)
quartered eggs (for decoration)

Directions

Remove skin and pull meat from the bones of the cooked chickens.
Cut the chicken into pieces, not hashed.
Mix the chicken with celery and mayonnaise dressing.
If desired, shape the mixture in a mold and turn it out onto a platter.
Spread the dressing over the shaped salad and decorate with capers, olives, and quartered eggs.

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.

Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + olivetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,485 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + caperstop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together397 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).