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Chicken Salad

A salad of cold boiled chicken mixed with celery, seasoned, dressed with mayonnaise, and garnished with celery leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold chicken and cut it into very small pieces, discarding skin and gristle.

  2. For each cup of chicken, add ¾ cup of finely chopped celery.

Season and serve

  1. Season the chicken and celery lightly with salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar.

  2. Mix the chicken and celery together and arrange it in the center of a platter or salad bowl.

  3. Pour mayonnaise dressing over the chicken and celery.

  4. Garnish with delicate white celery leaves.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery into a creamy salad.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cut the chicken into very small pieces. Small, evenly cut pieces give a uniform texture and let the dressing coat every bite. Large chunks stay dry in the middle and taste uneven, while pieces that are too fine turn mushy once mixed with mayonnaise.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, lemon. 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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