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Chicken Salad

A salad made with chopped cooked chicken, celery, egg yolks, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt, mustard, oil, cream, and a raw egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked chickens and celery coarsely.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a fine powder.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the powdered yolks with salt, mustard, and oil until well combined.

  2. Add cream to the mixture, then stir in the vinegar and raw 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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Become a powder that thickens and smooths the dressing.
Raw egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dressing together.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the salad.

The step that matters

Mixing the raw egg into the dressing. Raw egg can carry bacteria and may curdle or scramble if added to a hot or acidic mixture too quickly. Blending it gently into the cream and yolk mixture first keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, vinegar, flour, sugar, mustard, cream. 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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