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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad of finely chopped chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, and a dressing of lemon juice, butter, oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the chickens into fine pieces, mixing both light and dark meat.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chicken with the lemon juice.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely and mash the yolks.

Make the salad

  1. Add the egg whites and yolks to the chicken mixture.

  2. Moisten with melted butter and sweet oil.

  3. Stir in mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

  4. Add the chopped celery and enough vinegar to moisten the entire mixture.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and body from the mashed yolks and chopped whites.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, coating mouthfeel.
Sweet oil
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and coats the other ingredients.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, making the dressing silkier and milder.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, lemon, egg, butter, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, lemon, egg, butter, pepper, 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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