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Dessert

Mayonnaise Dressing

A chicken salad dressing with mayonnaise, optional celery or substitutes, and garnishes like hard-boiled eggs, pickles, capers, olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and celery

  1. Use all white meat, all dark meat, or a mix of both chicken.

  2. If celery is scarce, substitute with apple, white cabbage, potato, or shredded lettuce.

  3. Cut equal parts of chicken and celery into dice and marinate the chicken.

  4. Keep the marinated chicken in a cold place until ready to use.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the chicken and celery, then add a little mayonnaise lightly.

  2. Heap the mixture in a dish high in the center.

  3. Place mayonnaise over the top.

  4. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs, pickles, capers, celery tips, lettuce, or olives.

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.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 the bulk of the salad's texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery into a creamy dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds a soft, rich texture as a garnish.

The step that matters

Lightly adding the mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can thin out or weep if overworked, so folding it gently keeps the mixture creamy and the chicken and celery intact.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, celery, cabbage, potato, lettuce, egg):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, celery, cabbage, potato, lettuce, egg. 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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