Name: Chicken Salad for Fifty
Ingredients: 6 chickens, white meat only; 4 pounds sweetbreads; 1 pound pecan meats, broken; 6 heads celery; aspic jelly made from chicken stock; 3 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; cooked mayonnaise made with butter and whipped cream

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Salad for Fifty

Ingredients

Directions

Cut up the chicken about 4 hours before serving.
Pour a marinade of 3 tablespoons vinegar and 1 tablespoon oil over the chicken.
Drain the chicken thoroughly before mixing.
Cut the aspic into cubes and mix lightly through the salad, reserving ¼ for garnish.
Use cooked mayonnaise made with butter and thinned with whipped cream.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, vinegar, butter, cream):

Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, vinegar, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.