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Chicken Salad

A salad of minced chicken, ham or tongue, lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, beets, dressed with mustard vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the meat of the cooked fowls with a little ham or tongue.

  2. Cut the lettuce finely and place it in a dish.

  3. Put the minced chicken in the center of the lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the yolks of the eggs, mustard, vinegar, oil, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture, then let it cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs and beets.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Egg proteins thicken the dressing and help hold the oil and vinegar together.
Mustard
Helps emulsify the dressing and adds a sharp, savoury bite.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, silky body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Cooked fowl meat
Forms the main body of the salad and carries the dressing's flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the dressing mixture, then let it cool. Egg yolk proteins set and thicken the dressing as they heat. Overheating or boiling too hard can curdle or scramble the yolks, leaving a grainy, separated dressing instead of a smooth one.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, egg, mustard, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, egg, mustard, vinegar, 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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