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Chicken Salad

A salad of boiled chicken and eggs mixed with a vinaigrette of olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Mustard and celery 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 the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender, then remove and cut into small strips.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the eggs for three minutes, then remove from shells and mash.

  2. Mix the mashed eggs with olive oil or melted butter, vinegar, salt, mixed mustard, and pepper.

Assemble

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken strips and add essence of celery if using.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the salad, cooked until tender so it can be cut into strips.
Eggs
Mashed into the sauce, they add body and richness that bind the dressing together.
Olive oil or melted butter
Adds fat that makes the dressing smooth and gives it a rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the eggs and fat.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp flavour and some emulsifying help to hold the dressing together.

The step that matters

Boil the eggs for three minutes. Three minutes gives a soft, mashable yolk. Boiling longer sets the yolk firm and crumbly, which makes the dressing harder to smooth and less cohesive.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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