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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad made with cooked chicken, celery, French dressing, mayonnaise, hard‑cooked eggs, and optional capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Marinate the chicken and celery with French dressing.

  2. Chill the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the mixture in a salad dish.

  2. Cover with mayonnaise.

  3. Decorate with sliced hard-cooked eggs and capers if desired.

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. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + caperstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad and gives it its main texture and body.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the softer chicken.
French dressing
Its oil and acid flavor the chicken and celery as they marinate.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness, binding the salad and coating its pieces.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture. Cooling firms up the mayonnaise-coated salad and lets the marinated flavors settle and blend before serving.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, egg. 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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