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Chicken Salad

A salad of minced chicken, celery, lettuce, and a dressing of egg yolks, mustard, oil, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and vegetables

  1. Mince the tender meat from the cooked chickens.

  2. Chop the celery and lettuce, then mix with the chicken.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the hard-boiled egg yolks smooth with a spoon.

  2. Add mustard, salt, salad oil, sugar, and vinegar to the yolks and mix well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken and celery mixture in a salad bowl.

  2. Garnish with rings of boiled egg whites.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Rubbed smooth, they emulsify with the oil and mustard to make a thick, creamy dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, helping the dressing coat the chicken and celery smoothly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
English mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps bind the yolks and oil into a stable dressing.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Adding the dressing ingredients to the yolks. Mixing the oil into the smooth yolks gradually and thoroughly lets them emulsify into a stable, creamy dressing. If the mixture is not well combined, the dressing can separate and look oily.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, celery, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, celery, egg, mustard, sugar, 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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