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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad made from boiled chicken, celery, walnuts or olives, mayonnaise, and optional garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in boiling water, covering it completely, with salt, peppercorns, clove, bay leaf, onion, and celery until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the liquid and let it cool, then cut the meat into half-inch pieces.

Prepare and marinate

  1. Chop the celery into half-inch pieces, using half as much celery as chicken.

  2. Marinate the chicken and celery for 1 hour before serving.

  3. Drain any excess marinade, then mix the chicken, celery, and chopped walnuts or olives.

Assemble and garnish

  1. In a salad dish, mix part of the mayonnaise with the salad.

  2. Cover the top with remaining mayonnaise and garnish with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, or sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  3. In summer, substitute cucumber cubes for celery.

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. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the salad, becoming tender when cooked gently in water.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery into a creamy salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly savory crunch that contrasts with the soft meat.
Walnuts or olives
Add crunch and richness (walnuts) or briny flavor (olives) to the salad.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken until tender, then cool it before cutting. Simmering gently in water, fully covered, lets the meat cook evenly and stay moist. Cutting it only after it cools keeps the pieces firm, so they hold their shape and do not turn stringy or mushy when mixed with mayonnaise.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, celery, walnut. 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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