Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A salad of shredded chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, anchovies, olives, capers, lettuce, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold chicken and place it in a small pan.

  2. Add the sliced shallot, parsley, oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and salt to the chicken.

  3. Let the mixture soak for about 3 hours.

  4. Boil the eggs until hard and cut them into quarters.

  5. Chop the anchovies, olives, and capers.

  6. Reserve the small hearts of the lettuce for garnish and shred the other leaves.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer salad on a dish, then add the chicken, followed by the chopped anchovies, and more salad and chicken until all ingredients are used.

  2. Top with a thick layer of mayonnaise sauce and garnish with the reserved lettuce hearts and egg quarters.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the salad and its savory meaty flavor.
Eggs
Add richness and a firm, creamy texture when sliced into the salad.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savory depth that seasons the whole salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and moisture, binding the layers and coating each ingredient.
Lettuce
Forms the leafy base and bulk of the salad, adding fresh crispness.

The step that matters

Soaking the chicken in the seasoned oil and vinegar mixture. Soaking lets the acid and oil slowly penetrate the meat, seasoning it evenly and keeping it moist. Skipping or rushing this time leaves the chicken bland and drier in texture.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, egg, olive):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, egg, olive. 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.

More chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes