Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Chicken Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Remove fat, skin, and bone from the cold chicken and cut it into half-inch dice.
Trim and wash the salad greens, break them into small pieces, and dry them on a clean towel.
In a salad bowl, mix the chicken and salad greens. Dress with 1 tablespoon of oil, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, and ¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
Prepare mayonnaise as directed in the Cardinal Sauce recipe, omitting the beet coloring, and cover the salad with it.
Decorate the salad with olives, capers, and hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters.
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.
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Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,688 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Capers + celerytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together405 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,888 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
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Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,667 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,375 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, olive, capers, egg):
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Garlicfits better
- Celerythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, capers, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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