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Salad

Chicken Celery

A chilled dish of shredded chicken, egg yolks, and celery mixed with sweet oil, mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until cooked, then let them cool.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and chop it finely.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped chicken, egg yolks, and chopped celery.

  2. Add sweet oil, mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Mix everything well together.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its main protein texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy body that binds the salad together.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft meat.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and keeping the salad smooth.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks and oil.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, celery, 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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