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Salad

Salade De Volaille

A salad of sliced boiled chicken, lettuce, celery, hard‑boiled eggs, olives, capers, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Salade De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the chicken and cut it into neat small slices.

  2. Wash the lettuce and wipe the leaves dry.

  3. Wash the celery and cut it into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a basin, combine the chicken, lettuce, and celery.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and tarragon vinegar.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a salad bowl and pile it in the center.

  4. Garnish with groups of lettuce leaves, quarters of hard-boiled egg, olives, and capers.

  5. Pour the mayonnaise dressing over the salad.

  6. Decorate the top with finely chopped hard-boiled yolk, capers, or gherkins as desired.

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. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that moistens and binds the salad.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body, and make a firm, mild garnish.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and fresh bulk to the salad.

The step that matters

Wipe the lettuce leaves dry. Excess water dilutes the mayonnaise dressing and makes the leaves wilt and the salad watery, so the leaves must be dried before they are combined.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lettuce, egg, tarragon, vinegar, olive, capers. 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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