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Chicken Salad

A salad made from diced chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, and a dressing of butter, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in salted water until tender.

  2. Remove the skin, fat, and bones while warm, and reserve the skin, fat, and bones for stock.

  3. Once cooled, cut the chicken into dice-sized pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Remove the whites while hot and chop the whites.

  3. Rub the yolks into a smooth paste with butter.

  4. Mix in mustard, sugar, salt, and cayenne.

  5. Stir in olive oil and enough warm vinegar to achieve a sour cream consistency.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, mix the chicken with the chopped celery.

  2. Pour the dressing over the chicken and mix well.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of the salad as tender, diced meat.
Eggs
Yolks form a rich, smooth paste that enriches the dressing; whites add body.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the egg yolk paste.
Olive oil
Emulsifies into the yolk base, giving the dressing a creamy, silky body.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsified dressing.
Warm vinegar
Adds acidity and thins the dressing to a sour cream consistency.

The step that matters

Stir in the olive oil and vinegar gradually. Adding oil and vinegar slowly to the yolk paste lets the mixture emulsify into a smooth, stable dressing. Adding them too fast can cause it to separate and turn greasy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, butter, sugar, pepper, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, butter, sugar, pepper, olive, vinegar. 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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