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Mock Chicken Salad

A salad made with ground nuts, celery, lemon, almond butter, and egg whites, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a bowl, mix the nutmeat and chopped celery.

  2. Place the mixture on a serving platter and squeeze lemon juice over it.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine almond butter, hot water, and lemon juice. Stir and heat until boiling.

  2. Dissolve cornstarch in a little water, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Let it boil for 1 minute.

  4. Slowly pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg whites while stirring to cook the eggs.

  5. Pour the dressing over the salad while hot.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with celery leaves and lemon slices.

  2. Serve cold with a piece of lemon on the side.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Nutmeat
Provides the main bulk and chewy, protein-like texture of the salad.
Almond butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavor to the dressing, giving it body.
Egg whites
Beaten and cooked into the hot dressing, they thicken it and give it a creamy, airy body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid so the dressing clings to the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the nut butter.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg whites while stirring. Pouring slowly while stirring gradually warms the egg whites so they cook smoothly into the sauce; dumping them in at once can scramble the eggs into lumps.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, lemon, egg):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, lemon, 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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