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Jellied Chicken

A dish of cooked chicken set in gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Jellied Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chickens in a small amount of water until the meat easily pulls from the bone.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Once cool enough to handle, remove the bones and skin.

  4. Place the meat, including gizzard, liver, and heart, in a deep pan or mold.

Make the jelly and set

  1. In the remaining water, add the gelatine dissolved in a little warm water and boil until reduced to just under 1 quart.

  2. Pour the gelatine mixture over the chicken in the mold and let it cool.

  3. Cut with a very sharp knife and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 set in the jelly and makes up the dish.
Gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly that holds the chicken together when cooled.

The step that matters

Reducing the gelatine liquid to just under 1 quart. Boiling concentrates the broth and gelatine together. If it is reduced too little the jelly may not set firmly, and if reduced too far it can become tight and rubbery when chilled.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper. 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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