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Chicken Salad

A salad made from cooked chicken, celery, capers, and mayonnaise, optionally with beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Capers and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil or roast the chicken until fully cooked.

  2. Once cold, remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.

  3. Wash the celery and chop the white parts into small pieces.

Mix and serve

  1. Add the chopped celery and capers to the chicken and mix well.

  2. Just before serving, add the mayonnaise dressing and mix again.

  3. If desired, mix in chopped beetroot or arrange it around the edge of the dish.

  4. Garnish with celery tops.

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. Capers + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + caperstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that binds the salad together and moistens the chicken.

The step that matters

Add the mayonnaise dressing just before serving. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can thin, separate or make the salad watery if it sits for a long time with the chopped celery and chicken. Adding it at the last moment keeps the texture creamy and the celery crisp.

Swap the beetroot

The recipe marks beetroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, capers):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, capers. 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 →

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