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Salad

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of finely chopped chicken, eggs, celery, and a dressing of lemon, butter, oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the chickens into fine pieces, combining both light and dark meat.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the lemon juice, melted butter, sweet oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

  2. Add the chopped egg whites and mashed yolks to the mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped celery and add vinegar to moisten the salad.

  2. Combine all ingredients thoroughly and serve chilled.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing the main meaty texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body, with the mashed yolks binding the salad.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and freshness to the salad.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, softening the dressing into a creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, egg, butter, pepper, sugar, 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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