Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Jellied Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the chicken
Boil the fowl until the meat slips from the bones and the water reduces to about 1 pint.
Set the jelly
Remove the meat from the bones, discarding all bones, gristle, and fat, and place the meat in a wet mold.
Skim the fat from the broth, then add the butter, salt, pepper, and gelatine.
Stir until the gelatine dissolves, then pour the hot mixture over the chicken.
Set the mold in a cold place until the next day.
Serve
Slice with a very sharp knife before serving.
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.
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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 broth that becomes the jelly.
- Gelatine
- Sets the cooled broth into a firm jelly around the meat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the broth, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Skim the fat from the broth. Fat left in the broth can make the set jelly greasy and cloudy, and it can stop the gelatine from setting cleanly.
“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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