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Jellied Chicken

A chilled chicken dish set in a gelatinous broth, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Jellied Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the broth

  1. Boil the chicken with the bay leaf, salt, pepper, and onions in water until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the pot.

  3. Boil the broth down to 1 pint.

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup cold water.

  2. Add the dissolved gelatine to the broth along with the lemon juice.

  3. Pick the chicken into small pieces.

  4. Fill individual cups halfway with the meat.

  5. Pour the broth mixture into the cups.

  6. Strain the broth mixture.

  7. Set the cups on ice to jell.

Serve

  1. Remove the jellied chicken from the cups.

  2. Place the jellied chicken on a lettuce leaf.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is set within the clear jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled broth into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth.
Bay leaf
Adds a subtle aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Set the cups on ice to jell. Gelatine only firms when the liquid is well chilled, so the cups must stay on ice long enough for the broth to set fully. Removing them too early leaves a soft, unstable jelly that will not hold its shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, lemon, celery. 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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