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Chicken and Chicken Jelly

A gelatinous chicken broth thickened with egg whites and lemon, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken and Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the chickens as for a fricassee.

  2. Place the chickens in a deep kettle.

  3. Pour the cold water over the chickens.

  4. Heat the water slowly.

  5. Once boiling, skim the surface.

  6. Cover the pot.

  7. Simmer until the meat is tender and slips from the bone.

  8. Remove the chickens.

  9. Take out the meat.

  10. Return the bones to the kettle.

  11. Boil the bones until the water reduces to 2 quarts.

  12. Strain the liquid.

  13. Cool the liquid to allow the fat to congeal on top.

  14. Remove the fat.

  15. Keep the fat for cooking purposes.

Clarify and chill

  1. Add the lemon rind and juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and beaten egg whites to 1 quart of the jelly.

  2. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Heat slowly without stirring until it boils for 5 minutes.

  4. Let it settle for a moment.

  5. Pour through a straining cloth.

  6. Chill on ice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Gives the stock its body and gelatin, which sets the liquid into a jelly when chilled.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat and trap cloudy particles, clarifying the jelly into a clear liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Heat slowly without stirring. Stirring breaks up the egg white raft that forms as it heats, so cloudy particles stay in the jelly. Gentle heating lets the whites coagulate and collect the impurities, leaving a clear aspic.

“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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