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Pickled Chicken

Pickled chicken is chicken preserved in cider vinegar and water with optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chickens until the meat is tender and falls from the bones.

  2. Place the meat in a stone jar.

Pickle

  1. Pour 3 pints of cold cider vinegar and 1½ pints of the boiling water over the meat.

  2. Add spices if desired.

  3. Let it sit for 2 days before using.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Chicken + cidertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 cooked tender and then preserved in the brine.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that preserves the meat and gives it a sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Letting it sit for 2 days. The meat needs time for the vinegar to soak in and flavour it fully. Using it too early leaves the pickling incomplete and the taste weak.

“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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