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Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of cooked chicken, celery, walnuts, peas, and mayonnaise, garnished with lettuce, radish, hard‑boiled eggs, whipped cream, and herbs.

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

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the chicken, celery, walnuts, jellied chicken broth, mayonnaise dressing, and peas.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator until needed.

Serve

  1. Serve on small plates, garnished with lettuce, radish, and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped parsley or watercress.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad together and keeping it creamy.
Jellied chicken broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor, and its gelatin helps the salad hold together when chilled.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken and dressing.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a mild, slightly bitter nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until needed. Chilling lets the jellied broth set and firms the dressing so the salad holds its shape and stays cold and food-safe before serving.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, walnut, pepper, lettuce, radish, egg):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, walnut, pepper, lettuce, radish, 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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