Name: Chicken and Nut Salad
Ingredients: 6 tablespoons cold, cooked chicken or fowl, cut in cubes; 3 tablespoons finely cut celery; 4 tablespoons English walnuts, browned in the oven with 1 teaspoon of butter; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Mayonnaise dressing; Celery and whole nut-meats, for garnish

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken and Nut Salad

Ingredients

6 tablespoons cold, cooked chicken or fowl, cut in cubes
3 tablespoons finely cut celery
4 tablespoons English walnuts, browned in the oven with 1 teaspoon of butter
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Mayonnaise dressing
Celery and whole nut-meats, for garnish

Directions

Make the salad

Mix the chicken, celery, and browned walnuts in a bowl.
Break the walnuts into pieces and add salt to taste.
Moisten the mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

Serve

Mound the salad on a plate and garnish with celery and whole nut-meats.

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.

Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken: Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour from browning.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness that binds the salad together.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, walnut, butter, meat):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Garlicfits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, walnut, butter, meat. 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.

Chicken Salad623 recipes

Salad Dressing491 recipes

Tomato Salad179 recipes

Cold Slaw160 recipes

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Chicken and Nut Salad