Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Salad. No. 2.

A salad made with diced boiled chicken, celery, cream dressing, peas, and garnished with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken Salad. No. 2.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the cold boiled fowl or scraps of roasted chicken.

  2. In a bowl, combine the diced chicken, chopped celery, and cream dressing to soften.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the cold canned peas and mix gently.

  2. Make a mound of the mixture on a salad dish.

  3. Cover with additional dressing and garnish with thin slices of pickles.

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 + peastop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fowl or roasted chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft chicken.
Cream dressing
Adds moisture and richness and softens the chicken and celery.
Canned peas
Add sweetness and a tender bite in contrast to the chicken.

The step that matters

Mixing gently after adding the peas. Canned peas are soft and break apart easily. Gentle folding keeps them whole and avoids mashing the mixture into a paste, which keeps the salad's texture pleasant.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, 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 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes