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Chicken Salad

A salad made with cooked chicken, celery, mayonnaise, and optional white cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Chicken and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,375 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Draw, singe, and boil the chicken.

  2. Let it cool completely.

  3. Remove the skin and cut the meat into dice, using only the white meat if desired.

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and cut the white parts of celery into ½ inch pieces and set aside in cold water.

  2. Dry the celery and mix it with the chicken.

Combine and serve

  1. For every pint of chicken, use 2/3 pint of celery and 1 ½ cups of mayonnaise.

  2. Season lightly with salt and white pepper or cayenne.

  3. Add the mayonnaise and mix well.

  4. For a lighter dressing, add 1 cup of white cream to every ½ pint of mayonnaise before serving.

  5. Serve on a cold dish, garnished with white celery tips.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

  5. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes

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 body of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture that coat the chicken and celery and bind the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh flavor that contrast with the soft chicken.
White cream
Thins the mayonnaise, giving the dressing a lighter, looser texture.

The step that matters

Dry the celery before mixing. Wet celery dilutes the mayonnaise, making the dressing thin and watery. Patting the celery dry lets the dressing cling to the pieces and keeps the salad from becoming soggy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, cream. 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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