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Swiss Chicken Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Swiss Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare finely shredded lettuce, celery, and beetroot. Season and mix with mayonnaise.

  2. Line a border mold with aspic jelly and fill it with the mixture. Cover the mold with more aspic jelly.

  3. Once firm, turn out the mold onto a dish.

  4. Cut the white portions of cold chicken into small shreds and pile them in the center of the dish.

  5. Mask the chicken with stiff mayonnaise enriched with a small amount of whipped cream.

  6. Garnish the top of the border with thin rings of hard-boiled egg whites and rings of sliced beetroot.

  7. Sprinkle finely chopped truffle over the top and serve.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Celery + chickentop 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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, beetroot, chicken, cream, egg, truffle):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, beetroot, chicken, cream, egg, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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