Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

Chicken salad made with boiled chicken, onion, lemon juice, celery, mayonnaise, whipped cream, lettuce, capers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Clean and dress the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken in boiling water with onion, bay leaf, cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Reduce heat and cook until tender.

Prepare the salad

  1. Once cold, cut the chicken into ½-inch cubes.

  2. Remove fat and skin.

  3. Sprinkle the chicken with lemon juice.

  4. Place the chicken on ice.

  5. Mix the chicken with two-thirds as much celery.

  6. Dust with salt and pepper.

Dress and serve

  1. Combine mayonnaise with whipped cream to taste.

  2. Pour over the salad.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

  4. Garnish with celery leaves and capers.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the salad and becomes tender when gently simmered.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creamy moisture that binds the chicken and celery together.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing and adds a soft, airy richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the rich dressing.
Celery
Contributes crisp texture and a fresh, mildly savory crunch.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and cook until tender. Keeping the water below a hard boil lets the chicken cook gently, so the meat stays moist and tender rather than tough and stringy. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle proteins.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, lemon, celery, cream, lettuce, capers. 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.

More chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes