Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled chicken, diced; celery, diced; Mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

cold boiled chicken, diced
celery, diced
Mayonnaise dressing
lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare

Remove skin and gristle from the cold boiled chicken and cut it into dice.
Add an equal amount of diced celery.

Assemble and serve

Moisten the mixture with Mayonnaise dressing.
Place the mixture on lettuce leaves.
Drizzle some additional dressing over the top and serve.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,421 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled chicken: Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the diced ingredients together.