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Chicken Salad

A chilled chicken salad made with boiled chicken, celery, optional walnuts or olives, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in boiling water with salt, peppercorns, clove, bay leaf, onion, and celery until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the liquid and let it cool, then cut the meat into ½-inch pieces.

  3. Save the cooking liquid and bones for soup stock.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the celery into ½-inch pieces, using half as much celery as chicken.

  2. If desired, add ½ cup of chopped walnuts or olives to the chicken and celery.

  3. Marinate the chicken and celery for 1 hour before serving.

  4. Drain any excess marinade, then mix the chicken, celery, and nuts or olives.

  5. In a salad dish, mix part of the mayonnaise dressing with the salad.

  6. Cover the top with more mayonnaise and garnish with celery leaves, olives, lettuce, or sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  7. In summer, substitute cucumber cubes for celery if out of season.

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. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  2. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad, with its texture holding the pieces together.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and celery and giving the salad its creamy body.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild flavour that contrasts the soft chicken.
Walnuts or olives
Adds crunch or briny flavour, contrasting the soft chicken and dressing.

The step that matters

Drain excess marinade before mixing. Leftover marinade liquid thins the mayonnaise dressing and makes the salad watery, so draining it keeps the dressing thick and the texture firm.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, clove, onion, celery):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, onion, celery. 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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