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Salad

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of chopped chicken, eggs, celery, and a dressing of lemon, butter, oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked chickens into fine pieces, mixing both light and dark meat.

  2. Juice the lemons and set aside.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely and mash the yolks.

Combine and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the chicken, lemon juice, egg whites, and mashed yolks.

  2. Add melted butter, sweet oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the chopped celery and add vinegar to moisten the salad. Mix well and serve chilled.

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

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

  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. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the bulk of the salad and its meaty texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body from the mashed yolks, and texture from the chopped whites.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, coating mouthfeel.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and a fresh, lightly vegetal crunch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, making the dressing creamier and smoother.

The step that matters

Chop the chicken and eggs finely. Fine, even pieces let the dressing coat every bite evenly and keep the salad cohesive rather than chunky and dry.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, egg, butter, pepper, sugar, 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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