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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad made with chopped chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, and a dressing of lemon juice, 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 finely, including both light and dark meat.

  2. Juice the lemons and set aside.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely and mash the yolks.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, melted butter, sweet oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

  2. Add the chopped chicken, egg whites, and celery to the mixture.

  3. Moisten the salad with vinegar to your desired consistency.

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

Egg yolks
Mashed yolks with butter and cream form a rich, smooth dressing that binds the salad.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, silky texture.
Chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and a meaty texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly vegetal crunch that contrasts the soft filling.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and loosens the salad to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Moisten the salad with vinegar to your desired consistency. Vinegar should be added gradually because it thins the dressing and adds sharpness quickly. Adding too much at once can make the salad watery and overly tart, and it cannot be removed once mixed in.

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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