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Chicken Salad

Chicken Salad is a dish of chopped chicken, celery, walnuts or olives, dressed with mayonnaise and garnished with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in boiling water, covering it completely, with salt, peppercorns, clove, bay leaf, onion, and celery until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the liquid and let it cool, then cut the meat into half-inch pieces.

  3. Save the cooking liquid and bones for soup stock.

Make the salad

  1. Cut the celery into half-inch pieces, using half as much celery as chicken.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chicken, celery, and walnuts or olives.

  3. Marinate the mixture for 1 hour before serving, then drain any excess marinade.

  4. Mix a portion of the mayonnaise dressing with the salad mixture.

Serve

  1. Arrange the salad in a dish, cover with mayonnaise, and garnish with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, or sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  2. In summer, substitute cucumber cubes for celery if out of season.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  4. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides the main protein and texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and giving it a creamy texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild flavor that contrasts with the chicken.
Walnuts or olives
Add crunch and savory flavor to the chicken and celery mixture.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, celery, walnut, olive, lettuce, 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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