Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

Chicken salad made with boiled chicken, celery, olives, capers, olive oil dressing, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. Cut the boiled chicken into dice and mix with chopped celery, olives, and capers.

  2. In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, salt, and red pepper to make the dressing.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad and refrigerate for several hours.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. For the mayonnaise, place egg yolks in a bowl and slowly add olive oil while stirring steadily.

  2. Thin the mayonnaise with lemon juice until it reaches a creamy consistency, then season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad topped with mayonnaise and garnish with lettuce, olives, beets, and carrots.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing the main substance and texture.
Olive oil
Carries the dressing flavour and, emulsified with egg yolk, forms the mayonnaise.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil into a thick, creamy mayonnaise.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the chicken.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavour that cuts through the richness of the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the egg yolks for the mayonnaise. Oil must be added slowly while stirring steadily so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast can cause the mayonnaise to split and fail to thicken.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, olive, capers, vinegar, pepper, egg. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes