Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of chopped chicken, eggs, celery, and a dressing of lemon, butter, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

  1. Chop the cooked chickens into fine pieces, mixing both light and dark meat.

  2. Chop the egg whites finely and mash the yolks.

Combine and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the chicken, lemon juice, egg whites, and mashed yolks.

  2. Add melted butter, sweet oil, mustard, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the chopped celery and add vinegar to moisten the salad.

  4. Mix well and 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the salad, with light and dark meat adding varied texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Whites add soft bulk and mashed yolks enrich the dressing, giving a creamy texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and coating the chicken for a smooth mouthfeel.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly grassy crunch that contrasts the soft chicken and eggs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavors and balances the richness of the fat and yolks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the dressing smoother and more cohesive.

The step that matters

Mashing the yolks into the dressing. Yolks mashed and blended with the fats and cream emulsify into a smooth dressing. Leaving lumps or adding them unevenly yields a grainy, dry texture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, egg, butter, pepper, sugar, cream. 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.

More chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes