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Chicken Salad

A salad made from boiled chicken, celery, mayonnaise, and optional whipped cream, pecan nuts, and celery tops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the bones and skin.

  3. Use only the white meat if desired.

  4. Cut the chicken into coarse dice.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the salad

  1. Chop the celery into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Mix with the chicken.

  3. Combine with mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Do not mix until ready to serve.

  5. The dressing can be thinned with whipped cream if desired.

  6. A small amount of pecan nuts can be added if liked.

Serve

  1. Arrange nicely on a dish.

  2. Add some dressing over the top.

  3. Garnish with celery tops.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + nutstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Chicken + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness that binds the salad together.

The step that matters

Do not mix until ready to serve. Mixing early lets the mayonnaise soften and moisten the celery and chicken, so the salad turns watery and loses its crisp texture.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, celery, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, celery, cream. 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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