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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken, celery, eggs, and a vinaigrette of vinegar, butter, pepper, sugar, and eggs, garnished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until tender, then cut into small pieces.

  2. Add the chopped celery and sliced boiled eggs to the chicken.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, butter, black pepper, sugar, and beaten eggs.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring until it thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery mixture.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices on top.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the main body and protein of the salad once boiled and cut into pieces.
Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken and dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing until it thickens. Beaten eggs can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly. Gentle medium heat with steady stirring lets the eggs thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, vinegar, butter, pepper, sugar, lemon. 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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