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Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of minced chicken mixed with celery, dressed with mayonnaise and garnished with celery tips, eggs, lettuce, beets, capers or olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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.

Mix and chill

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

  2. Refrigerate the mixture until ready to serve.

Dress and garnish

  1. Pour the mayonnaise dressing over the chicken and celery, tossing to combine.

  2. 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
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and the meaty texture of the dish.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the soft chicken.
Mayonnaise dressing
Coats the chicken and celery, adding moisture, richness, and fat to bind the salad.

The step that matters

Mince the chicken without hashing it. Keeping the meat in small, distinct pieces preserves a pleasant texture. Over-processing breaks the fibers down into a pasty mass that feels mushy and dense.

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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