Name: Chicken Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups cold boiled chicken, diced; 1 head celery, shredded; 1 head lettuce; ½ lb. tomatoes, sliced; 1 teaspoon capers; 1 lemon, for garnish; ½ cup mayonnaise sauce

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

Shred the celery.
Dice the cold boiled chicken.

Assemble and serve

Arrange a border of lettuce leaves and tomato slices on a serving dish.
Place some shredded lettuce on the bottom of the dish.
Add the celery.
Pile the chicken in the center.
Pour the mayonnaise sauce over it.
Garnish with lemon, tomatoes, and capers.

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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise sauce: Adds richness and moisture, binding the chicken and celery together.
Cold boiled chicken: Provides the protein base and bulk of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly savory crunch.

Swap the lemon

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

Avocadofits better
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, lettuce, tomato, capers, sauce. 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.