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Chicken Jelly

A gelatinous chicken dish made by boiling chicken and bones, then seasoning the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the chicken into very small pieces and bruise the bones.

  2. Place the chicken and bones into a water-tight stone jar.

  3. Set the jar in a large kettle of boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

Strain and season

  1. Strain off the liquid.

  2. Season the liquid with salt, pepper, and mace, or with loaf sugar and lemon juice.

Finish

  1. Return the chicken fragments to the jar.

  2. Boil again in the kettle.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Bones and connective tissue release gelatin into the broth, giving it body and the ability to set.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the seasoned broth.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the jar watertight during the 3-hour boil. The jar must stay watertight so kettle water cannot dilute the broth. Long heating dissolves collagen from bones and connective tissue into gelatin, which lets the broth set as a jelly when cooled.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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