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Chicken Salad

This recipe uses a raw egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the chicken meat and celery into small squares and mix together.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt over the mixture and set it in a cool place while preparing the dressing.

  3. Rub the yolks of the hard boiled eggs to a fine powder.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to the yolks, then slowly add the salad oil, a few drops at a time.

  5. Incorporate the mustard and let the dressing stand while you whip the raw egg to a froth.

  6. Add the whipped raw egg to the dressing, beating briskly.

  7. Gradually mix in the vinegar.

  8. Combine the dressing with the chicken and celery mixture using a wooden spoon.

  9. Garnish with rings of the whites of the hard boiled eggs and parsley or bleached celery tops.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, egg, vinegar, sugar, cream, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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

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