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Fillets of Chicken in an Italian Salad

A salad of sliced chicken fillets with lettuce, celery, cucumber, chervil, eggs, anchovies, beans, and cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 396 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fillets of Chicken in an Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the fillets from the chickens and slice them into three thin pieces.

  2. Arrange the chicken slices on a plate in a star shape.

Assemble the salad

  1. In the center, mix the shredded lettuce, chopped celery, sliced cucumber, and picked chervil.

  2. Decorate the salad with the hard-boiled egg slices, additional cucumber, anchovy strips, French beans, and boiled cauliflower as desired.

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. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and the substantial body of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished plate.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that seasons the salad.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lettuce, celery, cucumber, chervil, egg, beans):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lettuce, celery, cucumber, chervil, egg, beans. 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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