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Chicken Salad

A salad of chicken, celery or cabbage, hard‑boiled eggs, vinegar, butter, sour cream, celery seed, mustard, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the chicken and celery or cabbage into coarse pieces.

  2. Cream the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and chop the whites.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, boil the vinegar, mustard, yolks, sour cream, butter, and salt until combined.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then pour it over the chicken and mix well.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded body to the dressing.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, giving the dressing a creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the dressing; chopped whites add body.

The step that matters

Letting the dressing cool before pouring it over the chicken. Pouring a hot dressing over chicken can make the mixture thin and greasy and can cook the delicate salad ingredients unevenly. Cooling it first lets the emulsion thicken so it clings to the chicken.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, mustard, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, vinegar, butter, cream, mustard, sugar. 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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