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Chicken Salad

A salad of chopped chicken and celery dressed with a butter, egg yolk, vinegar, sugar, salt, and red pepper mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and dressing

  1. Combine the chopped chicken and celery in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, stir the egg yolks with a fork. Slowly mix in the melted butter until well combined.

  3. Add salt, powdered sugar, vinegar, and red pepper to the dressing.

Combine

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

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the melted butter to form a thick, creamy dressing.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the butter.
Cooked chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and bulk.

The step that matters

Slowly mix in the melted butter. Adding the butter gradually to the egg yolks lets them emulsify into a stable dressing. Adding it too fast can cause the mixture to split and turn greasy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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