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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad of chopped chicken with a thickened vinegar, mustard, and egg yolk dressing, finished with whipped cream.

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

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks, melted butter, salt, sugar, and mustard until thickened.

  3. If the mixture is too thick, add more vinegar.

  4. Set the dressing aside to cool.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then remove the bones and chop it into small pieces.

  2. If using cabbage, add celery seed to the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the chicken and celery or cabbage, then pour the dressing over and stir lightly.

  2. Before serving, fold in the whipped cream.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + chickentop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and bind it into a smooth, creamy emulsion.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and airy volume to the finished salad.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks until thickened. Egg yolks thicken only gently with heat and can scramble if overheated or added too quickly to hot liquid. Stirring steadily keeps the dressing smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, mustard, vinegar, chicken, 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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