Skip to main content
Main

Jellied Chicken

A chilled chicken dish set in a savory broth, served with hard‑boiled egg slices and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Jellied Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the broth until reduced to about ½ cup.

  2. Season the broth with salt and pepper.

Assemble and set

  1. Place three slices of hard boiled egg in the bottom of a 6-inch pudding pan to form a design.

  2. Pack the chicken into the pan.

  3. Pour the broth over the chicken.

  4. Set the pan on ice to cool.

  5. Remove the chicken from the pan whole.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

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

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 packed into the mold and set in its own jelly.
Chicken broth
Its natural gelatin sets as it cools, holding the chicken together in a firm jelly.
Hard boiled eggs
Sliced eggs form a pale decorative pattern on the bottom, visible when unmolded.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to about ½ cup. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavor so the broth sets firmly when chilled. Too much water leaves a loose, weak jelly that will not hold its shape.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg. 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 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes