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Salad

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of cooked chicken, cucumber, walnuts, peas, celery, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Cucumber and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cooked chicken, chopped cucumber, chopped walnuts, cooked French peas, and finely chopped celery.

  2. Add mayonnaise dressing to taste and mix well.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Cucumber + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the main body and protein of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture, richness and fat that bind the salad together.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor against the soft ingredients.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cucumber, walnut, celery):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cucumber, walnut, celery. 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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