Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Jelly

A clear, gelatinous chicken broth made by simmering chicken with aromatics and clarified with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken.

  2. Disjoint the chicken, cutting the meat into small pieces.

  3. Remove the fat.

  4. Break or pound the bones.

  5. Place everything in a pot with cold water, using 1 pint of water for every pound of chicken.

Make the broth

  1. Heat the water slowly.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender, about 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Boil down the mixture to half its quantity.

  4. Strain and remove the fat.

  5. Clear the broth with the white of an egg.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon.

  7. Strain through a fine cloth.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into small cups.

  2. Cool.

  3. Add parsley, celery, and bay leaves for flavor.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and bones that give the broth its flavor and body.
Cold water
Extracts collagen and flavor from the chicken as it heats slowly.
Egg white (in the method)
Binds fine particles during clearing, so the broth becomes clear.

The step that matters

Cool the broth until it sets. Gelatin from the bones and connective tissue only sets into a firm gel once the broth is cooled, and it stays soft if it is too concentrated or not chilled enough.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes