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Chicken Salad

A salad of diced boiled chicken, celery, and a creamy mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, egg yolk, and vinegar into a smooth paste using a fork.

  2. Measure and mix vinegar and lemon juice, then strain.

  3. Slowly add salad oil to the egg mixture while stirring constantly until thickened. Continue alternating with the vinegar mixture until all is combined into a thick, creamy dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the boiled fowl into large dice and mix with diced celery, salt, red pepper, and half of the dressing.

  2. Cover a platter with blanched lettuce leaves and place the salad mixture on top.

  3. Pour the remaining dressing over the salad and garnish with parsley, olives, capers, and slices of hard-boiled egg.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar into a thick, stable dressing.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the dressing.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness to the dressing.
Boiled fowl
Forms the main body of the salad, supplying protein and substance.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken and dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring constantly. Oil added too fast to the yolk and mustard cannot be absorbed into the emulsion, so the dressing breaks and stays thin and oily instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, white wine, vinegar, lemon, celery, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, white wine, vinegar, lemon, celery, pepper, parsley. 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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