Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of shredded chicken, celery, boiled beets, pickles, egg whites, and a lemony mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chicken until tender and reserve the broth for soup.

  2. Remove all the meat from the bones and chop it.

  3. Chop the celery and place the chicken and celery in the center of a dish, piling it nicely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the raw egg yolk, salt, dry mustard, sugar, and lemon juice. Beat well.

  2. While beating, gradually add the melted butter until the dressing is thick.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange a layer of boiled beets around the chicken, followed by pickles and then the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Pour the dressing over the center of the salad, being careful not to disturb the decorative layers.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the melted butter into a thick dressing that holds together.
Melted butter
Adds richness and body to the dressing as it is beaten in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the butter.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury note.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and freshness to the chicken.

The step that matters

Adding the melted butter. Butter must be added slowly while beating the yolk so the fat disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can cause the dressing to separate and fail to thicken.

Swap the celery

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

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

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

More chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes