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Pickled Chicken

A whole chicken is boiled, deboned, and preserved in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pluck and singe the chicken, then wipe it with a wet towel.

  2. Draw the chicken without breaking the intestines and cut it into joints.

Cook and pack

  1. Boil the chicken in enough water to cover it, adding salt, mace, cloves, and peppercorns until tender.

  2. Remove all bones from the chicken and place the meat loosely in a jar.

Pickle

  1. In a separate pot, combine enough broth to half fill the jar with an equal amount of vinegar and all the spices; heat until scalding hot.

  2. Pour the hot pickle over the chicken in the jar.

  3. Once the pickle is cold, cover the jar and let it sit for six hours 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  4. Chicken + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. 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

Chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked tender and then preserved in the pickle.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the chicken and gives the pickle a sharp, tangy flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the chicken during cooking and helps draw out moisture and flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot pickle and letting it cool. The pickle must be scalding hot when poured so the spices release their aroma and the vinegar mixture penetrates the meat. Covering the jar only after the pickle is cold avoids trapping steam that could dilute the brine.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, clove, vinegar):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, vinegar. 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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