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Chicken Salad

Chicken salad with olives, pickled beets, and a dressing of Lucca oil, sweet cream, mustard, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in salted water until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the dark meat and cut the chicken into small pieces.

  3. Add salt if needed, then mix in sweet cream and a little extract of celery.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Slowly add the Lucca oil while stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Add vinegar to taste just before finishing the dressing.

Serve

  1. Mix some dressing with the chicken and broken lettuce.

  2. Serve the chicken on a dish and pour the remaining dressing over it.

  3. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs, olives, and pickled beets.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, stable dressing.
Lucca oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the dressing as it emulsifies.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness to the chicken, softening the texture.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavor.
Chickens
Provide the main protein and bulk of the salad.

The step that matters

Slowly add the Lucca oil while stirring continuously. Adding oil too fast to the egg yolks can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing greasy and thin instead of thick and smooth. Gradual addition lets the yolk lecithin surround the oil droplets so they stay suspended.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, 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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