Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 1 cabbage, chopped very fine; 2 eggs, hard-boiled; ½ cup vinegar; 1 teaspoon mustard; ½ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 tablespoon butter; Juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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

In a bowl, stir together salt, pepper, sugar, eggs, mustard, and butter.
Pour the mixture into boiling vinegar.
Minced the nice parts of the cooked chicken and add to the chopped cabbage.
Pour the dressing over the chicken and cabbage mixture.
Garnish the top with the whites and yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

Swap the cabbage

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

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, sugar, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.