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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken, celery, onion, and capers dressed with mayonnaise and whipped cream.

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

Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken.

  2. Dress the chicken.

  3. Place the chicken in boiling water, add onion, bay leaf, cloves, and mace.

  4. Bring to a boil and let it boil for five minutes.

  5. Reduce the heat and cook until tender.

  6. Once cold, cut the chicken into ½-inch cubes, removing fat and skin.

Make the salad

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per pint of chicken and sprinkle it over the chicken.

  2. Mix the chicken with two-thirds as much chopped celery.

  3. Dust with salt and white pepper.

  4. Mix mayonnaise with whipped cream to taste.

  5. Pour the mayonnaise mixture over the salad.

  6. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, whose cooked texture forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and a creamy, binding coating that holds the salad together.
Whipped cream
Adds airy richness and fat, lightening the dressing's texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, vegetal crunch against the soft chicken.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat and cook until tender. Vigorous boiling toughens the chicken's muscle proteins and dries the meat out, so a gentle simmer keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the mace

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

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

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