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Chicken and Cheese Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and pass them through a fine sieve.

  2. Gradually add the oil to the egg yolks while stirring continuously.

  3. Mix in the mustard, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Gently fold in the chopped chicken or veal and grated cheese.

  5. Serve on a bed of lettuce and garnish with celery and the whites of the eggs.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese, chicken, mustard, pepper, butter, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, chicken, mustard, pepper, butter, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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