Name: Chicken or Turkey Salad
Ingredients: chicken or turkey meat, cubed; celery, cut into pieces (half the amount of meat); hard boiled eggs, chopped (3 or 4); olives, chopped (equal quantity to eggs); French dressing; mayonnaise

Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Chicken or Turkey Salad

Ingredients

chicken or turkey meat, cubed
celery, cut into pieces (half the amount of meat)
hard boiled eggs, chopped (3 or 4)
olives, chopped (equal quantity to eggs)
French dressing
mayonnaise

Directions

Prepare

Cut the meat into cubes and measure it.
Cut the celery into pieces the same size as the meat.
Add the chopped hard-boiled eggs and olives.

Marinate and dress

Pour French dressing over the mixture and let it stand for two hours in a cool place.
Make a thick mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

Just before serving, mix everything together, reserving some mayonnaise to put on top.
Serve in shells or on lettuce leaves.

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.

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.

Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,667 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Meat + olivetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,485 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or turkey meat: Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its main protein texture.
Celery: Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft meat and eggs.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Olives: Add briny, salty flavour that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad into a creamy coating.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand in French dressing. Resting the meat, celery, eggs and olives in the acidic dressing for two hours lets the flavours soak in. Keeping it cool slows bacterial growth in the cooked meat and eggs.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, egg, olive):

Garlicfits better
Thymefits better
Rosemaryfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, egg, olive. 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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Chicken or Turkey Salad