Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 4 hard-boiled eggs; 1 pint vinegar; 2 tablespoons mustard; 4 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 cups celery, diced; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Mustard and celery 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

Cook the chickens in salted water until tender. Let them cool, then cut into small pieces.
Add twice the quantity of diced celery and sliced hard-boiled eggs. Mix well.
In a double boiler, beat the eggs thoroughly with mustard, sugar, and salt.
Slowly pour the egg mixture into the heating vinegar, stirring until it thickens.
Once cooled, pour the dressing over the salad just before serving. Optionally, add a little lemon juice to whiten the dressing and garnish with white celery tips.

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.

Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,627 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the celery

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

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.