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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken, celery, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Once cold, remove the meat from the bones and cut it into medium-sized blocks.

  3. Prepare the celery as directed previously.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine equal quantities of celery and chicken.

  2. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour the Mayonnaise dressing over the mixture and mix thoroughly with a fork.

  4. Serve immediately; do not let the salad stand for more than 2 hours after mixing.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad, giving it a meaty texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery and giving the salad its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after mixing. Once dressed, the celery gradually loses its crispness and the mayonnaise can separate or thin as moisture is released, so the salad is best eaten soon after mixing.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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