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Salad

Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken dressed with oil, vinegar, lemon, and seasoning, served with lettuce or celery and garnished with eggs, parsley, and fruit.

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

Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and joint the boiled chicken neatly.

  2. Pour the oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, grated lemon, and lemon juice over the chicken.

  3. Cover and let it marinate for an hour, turning often to enhance flavor.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the salad dressing over the chicken, using about ½ pint.

  2. Arrange the chicken on a dish with lettuce or celery.

  3. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs, parsley, lemon slices, and beetroot or cucumber.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled chicken
Forms the main body of the salad and provides the protein that the dressing coats.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and keeping the chicken from drying out.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slightly tenderises the chicken during marinating.
Salad dressing
Coats the chicken with extra moisture, richness and tangy flavour for the finished salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, firm texture and mild richness as a garnish that complements the chicken.

The step that matters

Marinating the chicken. The marinade needs the full hour with occasional turning so the oil, acid and lemon penetrate the surface evenly. Uneven turning leaves some pieces bland and others over-acidic.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, vinegar, pepper, lemon, lettuce, egg, parsley. 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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