Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 1 quart cold boiled or roast chicken, diced; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ½ teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; 3 cups tender white celery, diced; ½ cup mayonnaise dressing; ½ cup whipped cream; Crisp bits of celery or white celery leaves for garnish

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

1 quart cold boiled or roast chicken, diced
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
3 cups tender white celery, diced
½ cup mayonnaise dressing
½ cup whipped cream
Crisp bits of celery or white celery leaves for garnish

Directions

Prepare

Remove the skin and bone from the chicken and cut it into half-inch dice.
In a bowl, combine the diced chicken, lemon juice, salt, and pepper; let it stand in a cold place.
Dice enough tender white celery to make 3 cups and mix it with the chicken.

Dress and serve

Moisten the mixture with mayonnaise dressing and fold in the whipped cream.
Arrange the salad in a bowl and garnish with crisp bits of celery or celery leaves.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 moisture and richness, binding the chicken and celery together.
Whipped cream: Lightens the texture and adds creaminess to the dressing.
Tender white celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh flavor to the salad.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the chicken.

“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.