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Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely chopped cold chicken, parsley, egg yolk, celery salt, onion juice, salad dressing, lettuce, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold cooked chicken very fine.

  2. Add the finely chopped parsley and the yolk of a hard boiled egg.

  3. Pound these ingredients to a paste.

  4. Season with celery salt and onion juice, then moisten with salad dressing.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread the mixture on one slice of bread.

  2. Place a lettuce leaf over the mixture, then top with the second slice of bread spread with butter or salad dressing.

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.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the main texture.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a creamy body that binds the paste together.
Salad dressing
Moistens the chicken mixture, adding fat and tang for a softer filling.
Butter
Coats the bread, adding fat and flavour and limiting moisture soaking in from the filling.

The step that matters

Pound the chicken, parsley and yolk to a paste. The chicken must be chopped very fine and pounded so the yolk and dressing blend evenly. Coarse pieces keep the filling dry and loose, so it will not spread or hold together in the sandwich.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, egg, celery, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, egg, celery, onion, bread, 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.

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