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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad of cubed chicken, celery, mayonnaise, lettuce, egg whites, yolks, and gherkins.

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

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold boiled or roast chicken into ½ inch cubes.

  2. Wash, scrape, and cut celery into small pieces.

  3. Soak celery in a bowl of ice water to become crisp, then drain and dry on a towel.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine chicken and celery in a bowl, using half as much celery as chicken.

  2. Moisten with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

  4. Garnish with egg whites cut into fancy shapes and yolks forced through a strainer, or with gherkins cut into thin slices to resemble a fan.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled or roast chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, giving it substance and bulk.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise or boiled dressing
Coats the chicken and celery, adding moisture, richness and fat.

The step that matters

Soaking the celery in ice water. Soaking in ice water makes the celery pieces firm and crisp. Drying them thoroughly afterward keeps excess water from thinning the dressing and making the salad soggy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lettuce, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lettuce, 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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