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Chicken for Tea

A chilled chicken dish layered with hard‑boiled eggs and set in gelatinous broth, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken for Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in as little water as possible until the meat falls from the bones.

  2. Chop the meat finely and season with salt and pepper.

Make the mold

  1. Layer slices of hard boiled eggs in the bottom of a mold, followed by a layer of chopped chicken, then more eggs, and repeat until the mold is nearly full.

Set and serve

  1. Boil down the cooking water with a large pinch of gelatine moss until about 1½ cups remain, then season the liquid.

  2. Strain it through a coarse sieve and pour over the chicken in the mold.

  3. Let it stand overnight or all day in the refrigerator.

  4. Slice the dish and garnish with celery tops or parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is chopped and set into the dish as its main body.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced layers that show through the set mold when it is cut.
Gelatine moss
Thickens the cooking liquid so it sets into a firm jelly around the chicken.

The step that matters

Boil down the cooking water to 1½ cups. Gelatine moss only sets the liquid if it is reduced to the right volume. Too much water leaves a loose jelly that will not hold slices, while over-reduction makes it overly firm and salty.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg. 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.

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