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Jellied Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken set in gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 chicken

  1. Cook the chickens in a small amount of water until the meat easily separates from the bone.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Once cool enough to handle, remove bones and skin.

  4. Place the meat, including gizzard, liver, and heart, in a deep pan or mold until nearly full.

Make the jelly and set

  1. Add the remaining water from cooking to a pot.

  2. Stir in the gelatine and lemon juice if using.

  3. Boil until reduced.

  4. Pour over the chicken in the mold.

  5. Let it set.

  6. Slice and serve.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. 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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is set in the jelly and the cooking liquid that becomes the jelly.
Cox's gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly that holds the chicken together when sliced.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jellied chicken.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced. Boiling concentrates the cooking liquid so it has enough gelatine relative to liquid to set firmly. Too much water left in leaves a soft jelly that will not hold its shape when sliced.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper. 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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