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Salad

Chicken Salad with Nuts

A salad of diced chicken and mixed nuts dressed with a vinaigrette of vinegar, mustard, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Salad with Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove all skin, bone, fat, and gristle from the cooked chicken and cut the meat into small dice.

  2. In a bowl, blend the chicken and nuts.

  3. Add celery salt, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice to the mixture.

  4. Allow the mixture to stand for 20 minutes to 2 hours.

Make the dressing

  1. Heat vinegar with mustard, white pepper, celery salt, and salt in a double boiler.

  2. Blend in the beaten egg yolks and cook until thick.

  3. Strain the dressing.

  4. Add butter to the dressing and chill.

  5. Thin the dressing with whipped cream before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Nuts
Add crunch and a rich, buttery flavour that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the chilled dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Whipped cream
Thins the dressing and lightens its texture just before serving.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thick. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Cooking in a double boiler over moderate heat keeps the yolks from scrambling, so the dressing stays smooth rather than curdled or lumpy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, pepper, lemon, egg, vinegar, mustard. 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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