Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; 1 ¼ cups celery, cut into ¼ inch pieces; Mayonnaise dressing; Celery tips for garnish; Cold hard-boiled eggs for garnish; Lettuce leaves for garnish; Cold boiled beets for garnish; Capers for garnish; Olives for garnish

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the chicken until tender, then remove all fat, gristle, and skin.
Mince the chicken meat into small pieces, but do not hash it.
Mix the minced chicken with the celery in a bowl.
Refrigerate the mixture until cool.
Prepare a mayonnaise dressing.
Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery, tossing to mix thoroughly.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Garnish with celery tips, cold hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, cold boiled beets, capers, or olives.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together405 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the celery

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

Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Garlicfits better
Celerythe original

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