Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: white meat of chickens; dark meat of chickens (optional); celery; hard boiled eggs; ½ teaspoon mustard; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon oil; ⅓ cup vinegar; cream (to taste)

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the white and dark meat of the chickens into small bits, the size of peas.
Chop the celery into small pieces.
In a bowl, rub the yolks of hard boiled eggs smooth.
Add ½ teaspoon of mustard, ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, 1 tablespoon of oil, and ⅓ cup of vinegar to the yolks and mix well.
Combine the chicken and celery in a large bowl.
Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery, adding cream to taste just before serving.

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.

Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,192 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together855 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, egg, mustard, vinegar, cream):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, egg, mustard, vinegar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.