Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A salad of chopped chicken, celery, apples, oranges, and eggs mixed with a mustard‑oil dressing and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the hard-boiled egg yolks and raw egg yolks.

  2. Add the mustard and slowly drizzle in salad oil until the mixture thickens.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and cream just before serving.

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces and mix with the finely chopped celery.

  2. Pour the dressing over the chicken mixture.

  3. Serve.

Make the new version and serve

  1. For the new version, combine chopped chicken, celery, apples, oranges, and hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  2. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix in chopped red peppers and mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and thicken the dressing into a rich, smooth base.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks add body and creaminess to the dressing.
Salad oil
Forms the fat base of the emulsified dressing, giving richness and smoothness.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.

The step that matters

Drizzle the oil slowly into the egg yolks and mustard. Adding oil too fast breaks the emulsion, so the dressing stays thin or separates instead of thickening into a stable, creamy sauce.

“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.

More chicken salad recipes

Dressing 31Sandwich 8with Mayonnaise 6Cream Cheese 5Moulded 5Chinese 4 See all 638 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes