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Chickex Salad

A salad of diced chicken, celery, and a mustard vinaigrette with optional egg yolk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chickex Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and celery

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chicken and celery.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, rub the yolks of hard boiled eggs smooth.

  2. Add mustard, coarse sea salt, oil, and vinegar to the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Add a little cream to the dressing if desired.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery mixture 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.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Mashed smooth, they bind the oil and vinegar into a creamy emulsified dressing.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the dressing together and add a sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the chicken just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw moisture out of the celery and chicken over time, so the salad becomes watery and limp if dressed too early. Adding the dressing at the last moment keeps the texture crisp and fresh.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, egg, mustard, vinegar, 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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