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Chicken Salad

A chilled chicken salad with celery, capers, and a creamy dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and celery

  1. Clean the chicken and boil it in water until tender.

  2. Cool the chicken in the refrigerator, then cut it into small square pieces and remove the skin.

  3. Wash the celery and cut it into pieces of similar size.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and gradually add the salad oil while beating with a wooden spoon until thick and creamy.

  2. Add the vinegar to the mixture, then combine the chicken and celery in a salad bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery, then sprinkle with salt, white pepper, and cayenne, mixing thoroughly.

  2. Wash the lettuce leaves and arrange them around the edge of the salad bowl.

  3. Sprinkle capers on top and garnish with celery tips for an attractive presentation.

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.

  1. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the salad oil into a thick, creamy dressing that coats the chicken and celery.
Salad oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing protein and a tender texture when boiled until tender.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly savory crunch against the soft chicken.

The step that matters

Beating the oil into the egg yolks. Oil must be added slowly while beating so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast breaks the mixture, leaving a greasy, thin dressing instead of a thick, creamy one.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, pepper, egg, vinegar, capers, lettuce. 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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