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Chicken Salad

A salad made with cooked chicken, hard boiled eggs, vinegar, butter, mustard, sugar, sweet cream, red pepper, celery, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the hard boiled eggs with a spoon until smooth.

  2. Stir in the vinegar, melted butter, mustard, sugar, sweet cream, and red pepper.

  3. Beat the mixture together and bring it to a boil, then set aside to cool.

Assemble the salad

  1. Finely chop the chicken and celery in equal parts, season with salt, and mix.

  2. Add the dressing just before serving.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Mashed into the dressing, they give it a thick, smooth body.
Butter
Melted into the dressing, it adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing and balances the richness.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, loosening the dressing and softening its texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cooked chickens
Form the bulk of the salad, providing the main texture and substance.

The step that matters

Bring the dressing to a boil. Boiling the egg, butter, and cream mixture can curdle or separate it if heated too hard. Heat it gently and stir steadily so it thickens smoothly before cooling.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, vinegar, butter, sugar, cream, 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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