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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken, lettuce, celery, mayonnaise, hard‑boiled eggs, capers, and olives.

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

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken for 1 hour, or longer if using a fowl.

  2. Season with a little salt while boiling.

  3. Let the chicken cool completely, then bone and cut into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a deep dish, season the chicken with salt, pepper, vinegar or lemon juice, chopped lettuce, and chopped celery. Mix well and place in a salad bowl.

  2. Cover with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Decorate with chopped hard boiled egg, capers, stoned olives, quartered hard boiled eggs, and small lettuce leaves.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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 and keeping the chicken tender.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the chicken.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture to the salad.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and a mild, fresh flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, egg, capers, olive):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, egg, capers, olive. 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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