Chicken Salad

Chicken salad almost always is made with mayonnaise. It sometimes contains pieces of hard-boiled egg, celery, sweet pickle, and bell pepper; and it may be flavored with mustard or curry powder. It has long been a polite ladies-lunch type dish, presented in a pretty way atop a lettuce leaf or quartered tomato; but it’s also popular in hearty sleeves-up sandwiches. Beyond the basics, chicken salad inspires creative customizing. Apples are a popular addition, sometimes with walnuts, as at Early Bird Biscuit in Richmond, Virginia. At Harvest House in Landrum, South Carolina, chicken salad includes dried cranberries and goat cheese. Viva Las Arepas, a Venezuelan restaurant in Las Vegas, offers arepas stuffed with chicken salad that is made with cilantro-avocado mayonnaise. At the Cherry Hut in Beulah, Michigan, chicken salad is amended with locally grown tart dried cherries. The Root Cafe in Little Rock, Arkansas, makes the curiously named chicken salad salad, which is a scoop of curried chicken salad put atop a spring mix salad and garnished with matchstick apples.