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Salad

American Cream Cheese Salad

A salad of grated cream cheese, chicken, olives, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

American Cream Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated cream cheese, chopped chicken, and chopped olives.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add enough mayonnaise to shape the mixture into a form.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill thoroughly.

  2. Cut into slices for serving.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce, garnished with olives or nasturtium blossoms.

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.

  1. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

American cream cheese
Provides the creamy, rich base that binds the salad together.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Olives
Add a briny, salty flavour that contrasts with the rich cheese.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and fat so the mixture holds its shape when chilled.

The step that matters

Chill thoroughly. Chilling firms the cream cheese and mayonnaise so the mixture sets and can be sliced cleanly. Cutting it too soon can cause it to crumble or smear.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, chicken, olive, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, chicken, olive, pepper. 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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