LAURA LEE ALICE
COOKS
®
Nellie's Chicken Salad 4 to 6 servings
This recipe came from my Aunt Nell. My mother had written it down on a piece of paper and had put it in an old Rumford Cookbook. Aunt Nell would scoop a generous portion and place it on lettuce leaves, then top it with a dollop of mayo and a cherry. If she had an apple, she would dice it and toss with the orange pieces before adding to the rest of the salad. Cashews were one of her favorite nuts and she loved to use them in everything.
Nellie's Chicken Salad
Ingredients
• 4 cups cubed cooked chicken* (white meat)
• 2 large oranges, peeled, sectioned and drained
• 1 can pineapple chunks, drained
• 1 cup seedless grape halves
• 1 cup sliced celery
• ¾ cup mayonnaise
• 3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
• ¼ tsp of ground ginger or nutmeg (optional)
• ½ tsp sea salt
• ½ cup toasted cashews (pecans or walnuts)
Instructions
1. In large bowl, combine chicken, fruit and celery; chill at least
30 minutes.
2. In small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except for nuts; chill.
3. Just before serving, add the nuts. Refrigerate leftovers.
*I like to cut the chicken into ¾-inch cubes.
KEYWORDS
fruit chicken salad, chicken salad, nellie's chicken salad, best chicken salad
Recipes are like stories; they can change from person to person. Everyone has their idea of how a recipe should be, even
though it may have changed from the original. We will never know the true author of the original recipe, regardless of
what some may say. That's why I go back and look through the oldest cookbooks that I can find. Sometimes it's not the
recipe in the books that I find, but the tiny pieces of handwritten recipes and newspaper articles that are stuck within
the pages. That's where the real story is, finding those simple Southern recipes. -Mac