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Salad

Lobster, Chicken or Veal Salad

A salad of chicken, lobster, or veal with celery, beet, egg, mustard dressing, and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 ↓

Lobster, Chicken or Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the chicken, salt, pepper, celery, beet (if using), and egg white.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolk, salt, pepper, mustard, brown sugar, olive oil or butter, vinegar, and cream until well combined.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chicken mixture and mix well.

  2. Garnish with lettuce or parsley before serving.

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.

  1. Celery + mustardtop 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. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour or sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, making it smooth and creamy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the cream and yolk.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Emulsifies with the oil and mustard, helping the dressing hold together and turn creamy.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion in the dressing.
Celery
Adds crunch and fresh, mild flavour to the salad.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, lobster, egg, mustard, sugar, olive):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, lobster, egg, mustard, sugar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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