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Hot Chicken Salad

A warm salad of diced chicken in a creamy sauce served over toasted bread and topped with celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hot Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Marinate the diced chicken with olive oil, onion juice, lemon juice, salt, paprika, and celery pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat until bubbling.

  2. Stir in the flour and additional salt until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk and cream mixture, stirring until it boils.

  4. Add the marinated chicken to the skillet and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on toasted bread, topped with finely chopped celery.

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

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Diced chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk and cream mixture
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving body and richness.
Olive oil
Carries flavor into the chicken during marinating and keeps it moist.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk and cream mixture. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Keep stirring until the sauce boils so the flour starch fully thickens it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, lemon, celery, pepper, butter, flour. 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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