Skip to main content
Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad made with chopped cooked chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, cream, and a dressing of lemon juice, butter, olive oil, mustard, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked chicken finely, including both light and dark meat.

  2. Juice the lemons and set aside.

  3. Chop the hard-boiled egg whites finely and mash the yolks.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed yolks with melted butter, olive oil, mustard, pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add the cream and mix well.

Combine and finish

  1. Incorporate the chopped celery and enough vinegar to moisten the mixture.

  2. Finally, gently fold in the chopped chicken and egg whites.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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 body and protein of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body; mashed yolks bind the dressing.
Melted butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the yolk mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, creamy texture to the dressing.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mild flavor contrast.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the dressing.

The step that matters

Mashing the yolks with fat and seasonings. Mashing the yolks thoroughly with the butter and oil creates a smooth emulsified base. Lumps left in the yolks will carry into the salad and make the texture uneven.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, egg, butter, olive, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, egg, butter, olive, pepper, sugar. 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

Salad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesBoiled Salad DressingBoiled Salad Dressing67 recipes