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Chicken Salad

Chicken salad made with boiled chicken, celery, mayonnaise, and garnished with celery tips, hard‑boiled eggs, lettuce, beets, capers, or olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then remove all fat, gristle, and skin.

  2. Mince the chicken meat into small pieces, but do not hash it.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the minced chicken with the celery in a bowl.

  2. Place the mixture in a cool place, like an ice chest.

  3. Prepare the mayonnaise dressing and pour it over the chicken and celery, tossing to mix thoroughly.

  4. Chill until ready to serve.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with celery tips, cold hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, cold boiled beets, or capers/olives.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery together and keeping them tender.

The step that matters

Remove all fat, gristle, and skin before mincing. Fat and skin turn greasy and rubbery once chilled and mixed, while gristle stays chewy. Removing them while the chicken is warm and tender keeps the salad smooth and pleasant to eat.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, lettuce, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, lettuce, capers. 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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