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Chicken Salad

A salad of cold boiled chicken, celery, dressing, and garnishes including eggs, olives, and beet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Almond and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,875 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled chicken into bits the size of a shelled almond.

  2. Clean the celery thoroughly and soak it in ice water for at least 1 hour.

  3. After soaking, wipe the celery and cut it thinly, similar to sliced cucumbers.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Mix the celery with the chicken and your choice of dressing.

  2. Garnish with sliced or quartered hard-boiled eggs, celery leaves, or lettuce hearts.

  3. Add olives and beet shapes for decoration.

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. Almond + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  3. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Almond + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Chicken + celerytop 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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Dressing or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery together.

The step that matters

Soaking the celery in ice water. Soaking in ice water firms and crisps the celery's cell walls, so it stays crunchy instead of turning limp once it is mixed with dressing.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, almond, egg, olive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, almond, egg, olive. 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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