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Chicken Salad

A salad of shredded chicken, shallot, parsley, anchovies, olives, capers, lettuce, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold chicken and place it in a small pan.

  2. Add sliced shallot, parsley, oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let it soak for about 3 hours.

  4. Boil eggs hard, then cut them into quarters.

  5. Chop anchovies, olives, and capers.

  6. Reserve small hearts of lettuce for garnish and shred other leaves.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer salad on a dish, then add chicken, followed by chopped anchovies, and more salad and chicken until all ingredients are used.

  2. Mask salad with thick mayonnaise sauce and garnish with reserved lettuce hearts and egg quarters.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the layers.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that balances the dish.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness.
Olives
Add briny flavour and a savoury note to the salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess that binds and coats the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking the chicken. Soaking the meat in the oil, vinegar and seasonings lets the flavours penetrate and keeps the chicken moist. Too short a soak leaves the meat bland and dry.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, egg, olive):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, egg, olive. 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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