Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad

A chilled salad of cubed chicken, celery, onion, and spices, dressed with lemon juice, mayonnaise, and whipped cream.

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

Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the chicken

  1. Clean and dress the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken in boiling water with onion, bay leaf, cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, then reduce heat and cook until tender.

  4. Once cold, cut the chicken into ½‑inch cubes, removing fat and skin.

  5. Sprinkle the chicken with lemon juice and chill on ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the chicken with chopped celery in a 2:1 ratio.

  2. Dust with salt and pepper.

  3. Combine mayonnaise with whipped cream to taste and pour over the salad.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves and garnish with celery leaves and capers.

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 + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing the main texture and protein.
Mayonnaise
Binds the salad and adds richness and moisture.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing and adds a softer, creamier texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the chicken.

The step that matters

Chilling the chicken before dressing. The chicken must be fully cold before the mayonnaise and cream are added; warm meat makes the dressing separate and turn thin and greasy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, lemon, onion, celery, clove, mace, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, onion, celery, clove, mace, cream. 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

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