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Chicken Jelly

Chicken jelly is a chilled gelatinous chicken broth made by simmering a whole chicken and straining the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cook the chicken in enough water to cover it slightly.

  2. Stew gently until the meat falls from the bones and the broth reduces to about 1 pint.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Strain and press the broth through a colander and then a coarse cloth.

  5. Cook the strained broth over the fire for a few more minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into an earthen dish to harden and refrigerate.

  2. Serve cold in slices, or make sandwiches with buttered bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Supplies the meat and collagen-rich bones that give the broth body and flavour.
Water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the chicken as it simmers down to a concentrated broth.

The step that matters

Cook the strained broth for a few more minutes. The broth must be concentrated enough to set firmly when cooled. Too much water leaves it soft, while overcooking can make it overly salty or reduce it too far. Brief reheating keeps it hot and fluid for pouring into the dish.

“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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