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Veal, or Chicken Jelly

A gelatinous dish made by boiling veal or chicken with bones, lemon rind, mace, sugar, egg whites, gelatin, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Veal, or Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut or chop the meat and break and pound the bones.

  2. Pack the meat and bones into a kettle and fill it with cold water to three times the depth of the meat.

  3. Add the thinly shaved rind of 1 lemon and 1 teaspoon of mace.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the mixture down to half and set the liquor aside until the next day.

  2. The next day, finish the jelly by adapting the proportions of sugar, whites of eggs, gelatin, and wine according to the quantity of jelly you have.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Meat (veal or chicken)
Gives the stock its savoury body and flavour as it simmers down.
Bones
Release gelatine and body into the liquor during long simmering, helping it set firm.
Whites of eggs
Bind and clarify the liquor, collecting impurities so the jelly runs clear.
Gelatine
Provides the setting structure that lets the finished jelly hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury stock and the wine.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture down to half. Reducing concentrates the flavour and natural gelatine from the bones. Boiling too hard can cloud the liquor, so a gentle simmer keeps it clearer and better tasting.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lemon, sugar, egg, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lemon, sugar, egg, wine. 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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