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Chicken or Small Birds in Aspic Jelly

A chilled gelatin set containing pieces of chicken or small birds, served on lettuce with mayonnaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 or Small Birds in Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in 2 cups of cold water.

  2. Add the beef extract, boiling water, pepper, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the egg white slightly and add a few drops of caramel.

  4. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes and strain through a flannel bag.

Mould and serve

  1. Mould in small cups by placing a little chicken at the bottom and pouring in the jelly.

  2. Once set, serve on lettuce with mayonnaise sauce.

  3. Small birds can be prepared in the same way.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once cooled.
Egg white
Gathers impurities as it heats, helping the jelly strain clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the savoury jelly.
Chicken
Provides the meat that is suspended within the set jelly.

The step that matters

Boil and strain the jelly. Boiling with the beaten egg white lets it coagulate and trap cloudy particles, and straining through a flannel bag removes them, so the aspic sets clear rather than murky.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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