Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A chicken salad with shallots, parsley, anchovies, olives, capers, lettuce, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Salad

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold chicken and place it in a small pan.

  2. Add the sliced shallot, parsley, oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Let it soak for about 3 hours.

Prepare the garnishes

  1. Boil the eggs hard and cut them into quarters.

  2. Chop the anchovies, olives, and capers.

  3. Reserve the small hearts of the lettuce for garnish.

  4. Shred the other leaves.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer salad on a dish.

  2. Add the chicken.

  3. Add the chopped anchovies.

  4. Add more salad and chicken until all ingredients are used.

  5. Top with a thick layer of mayonnaise sauce.

  6. Garnish with the reserved lettuce hearts and egg quarters.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken meat
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the flavour of the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, creamy texture to the layered salad.
Lettuce
Provides the crisp, fresh base that gives the salad its body.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and moisture, binding the layers and coating the salad.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the dish.

The step that matters

Let the chicken soak. Soaking the meat in oil, vinegar and seasonings lets it absorb flavour and become tender. Skipping or shortening the rest leaves the chicken bland and drier in texture.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, egg, olive):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, pepper, 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.

More chicken salad recipes

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

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes