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Salad

Chicken and Mushroom Salad

A salad of diced chicken and sautéed mushrooms mixed with mayonnaise and served on lettuce leaves, garnished with pepper‑stuffed olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken and Mushroom Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add a small amount of hot water to a pan and cook the mushrooms for five minutes.

  2. Let the mushrooms cool, then mix them with an equal quantity of diced chicken.

  3. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and mix in mayonnaise.

  4. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves and garnish with olives stuffed with peppers.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 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

Fresh mushrooms
Provide the bulk and earthy flavor, softening as they cook in a little water.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the protein and firm, meaty texture that makes up the salad body.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that binds the chicken and mushrooms together.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, olive, pepper. 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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