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Turkey Salad

A cold salad of minced turkey, hard‑boiled eggs, ham, celery, apples, and pickles dressed with mustard, celery seed, and oil or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Turkey Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Mince the turkey very finely.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with water until smooth.

  3. Add salt, mustard, and pepper to the egg yolk mixture to taste.

  4. Stir in celery seed, melted butter or olive oil, and vinegar to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the turkey and chopped celery together.

  2. Pour the dressing over the turkey mixture just 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.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed into the dressing give it a rich, creamy body.
Butter or olive oil
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and rich-tasting.
Turkey
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the turkey just before serving. Acid and salt in the dressing gradually soften and wet the celery and turkey, so dressing added too early makes the salad limp and watery. Adding it at the last moment keeps the texture crisp.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, egg, mustard, celery, butter, vinegar, ham):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, egg, mustard, celery, butter, vinegar, ham. 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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