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Whole Chicken in Glacee

A whole chicken stuffed with ham, veal, mushrooms, truffles, onion, thyme, parsley, and set in gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Margaret Brown · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Whole Chicken in Glacee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Remove all bones from a medium-sized chicken.

  2. Prepare stuffing by combining 1/4 pound ham, 1/2 pound veal, 1/2 can mushrooms, 1/4 can truffles, a small piece of onion, a little thyme, and parsley; chop the meat, parsley, thyme, celery very finely together. Slice the mushrooms; skin the truffles, cut them, and add them to the chopped mixture; season with pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Stuff the boneless chicken tightly with the mixture, seasoning with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Tie the stuffed chicken in a tightly closed bag.

  5. Press the bagged chicken overnight under a heavy press.

  6. In the morning, remove the chicken from the bag, cut off each end, and place it in a melon or Charlotte mold.

Make the jelly

  1. Take 3 pints of chicken water, skim off all grease, and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Melt 1 box of gelatin in cold water; add 2 egg whites with their shells to the chicken water.

  3. Heat the mixture over fire, stirring, until it boils for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid through a flannel bag.

  5. Let the strained liquid cool to near room temperature, enough to be spooned.

Assemble and serve

  1. Hard-boil 2 eggs, cut each into 6 slices, and insert a sprig of parsley into the center of each egg slice; place the egg slices on four sides of the chicken, with parsley turned down.

  2. Pour the cooled jelly over the chicken.

  3. Place the molded chicken in the refrigerator to set.

  4. Turn the chicken out of the mold and garnish with watercress or frizzed celery.

  5. (Optional) The duck in glacee can be prepared in the same way.

By Margaret Brown. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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

Eggs
Egg whites clarify the chicken water, collecting impurities into a clear jelly; eggs also provide decoration.
Gelatin
Sets the cooled liquid into a firm jelly that holds the chicken together.
Veal
Forms the mild, moist meat stuffing that fills the boned chicken.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the chopped stuffing.
Chicken water
Stock that becomes the flavorful, jellied liquid poured over the chicken.

The step that matters

Straining and cooling the jelly. Boiling with egg whites clarifies the stock, and straining through a flannel bag removes the cloudy particles. If the liquid is poured too hot, it can melt the set or cloud the jelly, and if it is too cold it may set unevenly before it coats the chicken.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Marjoramabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, chicken, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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