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Chicken or Veal Salad

A salad of cooked chicken or veal with celery, mayonnaise, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken or Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Remove gristle and bone from the meat and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Add the celery to the meat.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix the egg, melted butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, salt, water, and sugar.

  2. Cook over hot water until the mixture reaches the right consistency.

  3. Let the dressing cool before combining it with the meat and celery.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and adds richness and body.
Flour
Helps thicken the cooked dressing so it holds together.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cooked chicken or veal
Forms the main body of the salad.

The step that matters

Cook over hot water until the mixture reaches the right consistency. The egg proteins set and thicken the dressing as it heats, but high heat can curdle the egg and make it grainy. Gentle hot-water cooking, stirred steadily, keeps the dressing smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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