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Salad

Chicken Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, raw eggs, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a wooden bowl, combine the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the raw eggs.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper, and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually add the lemon juice while mixing until smooth.

  4. Slowly stir in the olive oil, continuing to mix constantly.

  5. If desired, scald some mustard and add it to taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  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

Raw eggs
Emulsify the oil and lemon juice into a thick, creamy dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dressing smoothly.
Olive oil
Provides fat that gives the dressing body and a smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly while mixing constantly so the egg proteins can hold it in tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can cause the dressing to separate or break.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, olive, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, olive, lemon. 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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