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Chicken Sabad

A dish of minced chicken and celery mixed with a seasoned egg yolk sauce, served with sliced bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Sabad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into very small bits and mince the celery finely.

  2. Mix the minced celery with the chicken.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, mustard, vinegar, and sweet oil to the egg yolks and mix well.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the chicken and celery, stirring with a silver spoon.

  2. Serve with sliced bread and butter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed smooth to form the creamy base that binds the salad together.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the dressing a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the rich yolks and oil.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the yolks and oil.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Mixing the yolks with the oil and seasonings. Yolks must be mashed smooth before the oil is added so they can emulsify it into a stable, creamy dressing rather than a greasy, separated one.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar, bread. 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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