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Jellied Chicken

A preserved chicken dish made by cooking the meat, then setting it in gelatin stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Jellied Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dress, clean, and cut up the chicken.

  2. Place in a stew pan with the onion and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cook slowly until the meat falls from the bones, adding salt halfway through.

Make the stock

  1. Remove the chicken and reduce the stock to 1 cup; strain and skim off the fat.

  2. Soften the gelatine in cold water and add it to the stock.

Assemble and set

  1. Decorate the bottom of a mold with carrots, hard cooked eggs, and parsley.

  2. Pack the meat, freed from skin and bone, in layers of dark and white meat.

  3. Pour the stock over the meat and place under a heavy weight.

  4. Keep in a cold place until firm.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Fowl
Provides the meat and the rich flavour of the stock that sets the dish.
Granulated gelatine
Sets the strained stock so the chicken holds its shape when cold.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the stock. Fat left in the reduced stock can keep the jelly from setting cleanly and can make it greasy on the palate. Skimming and straining before adding the gelatine gives a clear, firm set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, egg, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, egg, parsley. 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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