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Chicken Salad

Chicken Salad made with boiled chicken, celery, egg yolk dressing, and optional capers, pickles, olives, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in water with a generous pinch of salt until tender, then let it cool in the water.

  2. Remove all skin, bones, and gristle from the chicken, and cut the meat into pieces (do not chop).

  3. Add a little salt and the white part of the celery to the chicken, and toss with a fork until light.

  4. Set the chicken mixture aside in a cool place or on ice while you prepare the dressing.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, dry mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil, about 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well.

  3. When you reach the last 2 tablespoons of oil, beat in the lemon juice until the dressing turns white and creamy.

  4. Add the remaining oil and beat well until the dressing is thick enough to spread.

  5. Optionally, mix in chopped capers, cucumber pickles, or olives.

Serve

  1. Garnish the salad dish with lettuce leaves before serving.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, thickening it into a spreadable, creamy mass.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its body and richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and helps it turn pale and creamy.
Chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and a tender texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, vegetal crunch to the chicken.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually to the yolks. Egg yolks emulsify oil only when the oil is added slowly while beating. Adding it too fast lets the oil separate, so the dressing stays loose instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, lemon. 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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