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Salad

Mayonnaise De Volaille

A chilled chicken salad dressed with mayonnaise and French dressing, served with lettuce, olives, beet strips, pickles, capers, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers 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 ↓

Mayonnaise De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into small dice; do not chop it.

  2. Pour half of the French Dressing over the chicken and let it stand in the refrigerator for several hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. When ready to serve, place the chicken in a neat mound in a salad bowl.

  2. Arrange the lettuce around the chicken and spread the Mayonnaise over it.

  3. Place the heart of the lettuce in the center and garnish with olives, beet strips, pickles, capers, and hard-boiled eggs as desired.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the salad and provides protein and substance.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the chicken and lettuce with fat.
French dressing
Marinates the chicken, adding acidity and flavor while it stands.
Lettuce
Provides crisp texture and a fresh base for the salad.

The step that matters

Marinating the chicken in French Dressing. Letting the diced chicken stand for several hours lets the acidic dressing penetrate and season the meat. Cutting it small and keeping it chilled helps it absorb flavor evenly without becoming mushy.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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