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Salad

Dressing for Chicken and Celery

A dressing made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, salt, oil, vinegar, and cream, served over cooked chicken and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery 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 ↓

Dressing for Chicken and Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of hard-boiled eggs smooth in a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, salt, oil, and vinegar to the yolks and mix well.

  3. Add cream to the dressing before serving.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chicken and celery.

  2. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery 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.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and vinegar to give the dressing a smooth, thick body.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing a silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the dressing's texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps hold the emulsion together.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw moisture out of celery and can soften it over time, so dressing added too early leaves the salad limp and watery.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, vinegar, cream, chicken. 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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