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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad of shredded chicken, celery, mayonnaise dressing, olive oil, capers, olives, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the cold chicken and shred the meat.

  2. Combine the shredded chicken with chopped celery.

  3. Prepare 2 to 4 quarts of mayonnaise dressing using about 1 gallon of fine olive oil.

Make and serve the salad

  1. Mix the chicken and celery with the mayonnaise dressing.

  2. For an elegant presentation, mold the salad and turn it out onto a platter.

  3. Decorate with capers, olives, and quartered hard-boiled 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the chicken and celery and adds moisture and richness.
Fine olive oil
Forms the fat base of the mayonnaise, adding richness and smooth body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Mix the chicken and celery with the mayonnaise dressing. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can break or turn thin if overworked or if it is too warm. Keeping the chicken cold and mixing gently helps the dressing stay creamy and cling to the meat rather than make the salad soupy.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, capers, 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.

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