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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken, celery, walnuts or olives, mixed with mayonnaise and garnished with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, or hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in boiling water with salt, peppercorns, clove, bay leaf, onion, and celery until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the liquid and let it cool.

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the meat into ½-inch pieces.

  2. Cut the celery into ½-inch pieces, using half as much celery as chicken.

  3. Marinate the chicken and celery for 1 hour before serving.

  4. Drain any excess marinade.

  5. Mix the chicken, celery, and chopped nuts or olives.

  6. In a salad dish, mix a portion of the mayonnaise dressing with the salad.

  7. Cover the top with more mayonnaise.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, or sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

  2. If celery is out of season, substitute with cucumber cut into cubes.

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. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 meaty texture of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness that bind the salad together.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and fresh crunch against the soft chicken.
Walnuts or olives
Adds crunch and a contrasting savoury flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Draining the marinade. Excess liquid left in the salad will thin the mayonnaise and make the dressing watery, so draining it before dressing keeps the salad creamy and well bound.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, celery, walnut):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, celery, walnut. 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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