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Chicken Salad

A salad of diced boiled chicken, celery, olives, capers, dressed with olive oil, vinegar, and a homemade mayonnaise, garnished with lettuce, olives, beets, and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Remove skin and fat from the chicken and dice the meat.

  2. Mix the chicken with chopped celery, olives, and capers.

  3. In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, salt, and red pepper; pour over the salad and refrigerate for several hours.

Make the mayonnaise

  1. For the mayonnaise, place egg yolks in a bowl and slowly add olive oil while stirring steadily.

  2. As the mixture thickens, thin it with lemon juice until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Mound the chicken salad on a platter, pour the mayonnaise over it, and garnish with lettuce, olives, beets, and carrots.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken meat
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its main texture and substance.
Olive oil
Adds richness and body, and emulsifies with the egg yolks to form the mayonnaise.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil into the mayonnaise, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the dressing.
Capers
Contribute a briny, sharp flavor that cuts through the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil to the egg yolks. Oil must be added slowly while stirring so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast breaks the mixture, leaving it oily and thin instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, olive, capers, vinegar, pepper, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, olive, capers, vinegar, pepper, egg. 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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