Name: Mayonnaise of Chicken, Nuts and Celery
Ingredients: 1 pint cold chicken, cut into small cubes; 3 tablespoons oil; 1½ tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon paprika; 1 cup crisp celery, cut into bits

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 ↓

Mayonnaise of Chicken, Nuts and Celery

Ingredients

1 pint cold chicken, cut into small cubes
3 tablespoons oil
1½ tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon paprika
1 cup crisp celery, cut into bits

Directions

Marinate and combine

Marinate the chicken in oil, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, and paprika.
Drain the marinade from the chicken.
Mix the marinated chicken with the celery.

Serve

Serve immediately.

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.

Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken: Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild flavor.
Oil: Adds fat and carries the marinade's flavor into the chicken.
Lemon juice or vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor of the chicken.

The step that matters

Draining the marinade. Leftover marinade carries excess oil and liquid, which can make the salad greasy or watery. Draining well keeps the mixture cohesive and the celery crisp.

“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.

Chicken Broth257 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Chicken Soup156 recipes

Cream of Celery Soup113 recipes

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Mayonnaise of Chicken, Nuts and Celery