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Mayonnaise of Chicken

A chicken salad made with mayonnaise, celery, and egg yolks, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mayonnaise of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Chop the white meat of the boiled chicken separately.

  2. Chop the celery separately.

  3. Place the chopped chicken and celery in a salad bowl, sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the salad, and refrigerate until ready.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until fine.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of olive oil, stirring vigorously.

  3. Mix in 1 teaspoon of prepared mustard, white pepper, and 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  4. Whip the egg white to a froth and fold the froth into the dressing.

  5. Gradually add vinegar, one spoonful at a time, stirring constantly until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Carefully mix the salad into the dressing using two forks.

  2. Line the bowl with lettuce leaves.

  3. Garnish with chopped egg whites or cut into half-moons.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

  5. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and mustard to form a thick, smooth, creamy dressing.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it lightens the dressing and adds airy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness and sugar.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps create a smooth, emulsified, creamy dressing.
White meat of boiled chicken
Forms the main protein body of the salad.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar, one spoonful at a time. Adding acid slowly while stirring constantly lets the oil and yolk emulsion hold together. Adding it all at once can break the dressing, leaving it thin and separated.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, celery, egg, olive, mustard, 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.

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