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For Mayonnaise Chicken Salad

A chicken salad mixed with celery, cabbage, and a mayonnaise-like dressing made from egg yolks, butter, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

For Mayonnaise Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken and let it cool in the cooking water.

  2. Chop the cooled chicken and hard-boiled egg whites moderately fine.

  3. Mix equal quantities of chicken, celery, and cabbage.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mash the egg yolks fine and mix with butter, sugar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add oil and vinegar gradually, alternating as in mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the salad with part of the dressing and shape it into a mound on a flat dish.

  2. Pour the remaining dressing over the salad and garnish with celery leaves, capers, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

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 bulk of the salad.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, smooth dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, forming the body of the dressing when emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich flavour to the dressing base.
Celery
Adds crisp texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Adding oil and vinegar gradually. Oil and vinegar must be added slowly, alternating, so the egg yolk can emulsify them. Adding too much at once can break the dressing, leaving it oily and thin instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chicken, celery, butter, sugar, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chicken, celery, butter, sugar, mustard, vinegar. 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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