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Salad

Chicken Mayonnaise

A salad of roasted chicken, hard‑boiled eggs, lettuce, olives, anchovies, capers, gherkins, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the chicken until well done and cut it into suitable joints.

  2. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters.

  3. Slice the lettuce and arrange the chicken joints in the center of the lettuce.

Assemble and dress

  1. Sprinkle the chopped olives, anchovies, capers, and gherkins over the chicken.

  2. Cover the entire dish with mayonnaise sauce so that it is completely hidden.

  3. Arrange 16 pieces of white hearts of lettuce and 16 pieces of hard-boiled eggs in a border around the dish.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise sauce
Coats and moistens the chicken and binds the salad together with a rich, creamy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild richness and a creamy yolk texture that complements the chicken.
Roasted chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the salad, with meaty texture carried by the sauce.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that sharpens the flavour of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cover the entire dish with mayonnaise sauce so that it is completely hidden. Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil, egg and acid that can separate or turn greasy if overworked or warmed. Keep it cool and spread it evenly so it seals the chicken and lettuce without thinning into a runny layer.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, olive, capers, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, olive, capers, sauce. 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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