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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled or roasted chicken, celery, and a dressing of egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and fat from the chicken, disjoint it, and cut the meat into small pieces, about 1 inch.

  2. Wash and split the celery, cutting the white part into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Mix the chicken and celery in a deep dish and set aside.

Make the dressing

  1. In a flat dish, mash the egg yolks with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, mustard, vinegar, and sweet oil to the egg yolks and mix thoroughly until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery just before serving and mix well with a fork.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

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 of the salad as cooked meat pieces.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh body that contrasts with the soft meat.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and mustard to form a thick, creamy dressing.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil.
Sweet oil
Forms the fat base of the emulsified dressing, giving richness and smoothness.

The step that matters

Dressing just before serving. Egg yolk and oil form an emulsion that can loosen or weep if left too long with the wet celery and chicken, so the dressing should be added shortly before serving and mixed gently.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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