Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Gelatine

A chilled gelatin set of chicken, herbs, and layered meats with nuts and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the fowl in cold water with soup herbs and cook slowly until tender.

  2. Let the fowl cool in the broth, then cut the meat into neat pieces.

  3. Boil the broth down to 1 quart, strain, and clarify with the white and shell of one egg.

Set the jelly

  1. Bring the broth to a boil, then add the soaked and strained gelatine.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, celery salt, paprika, minced parsley, and lemon juice.

Assemble the mould

  1. Butter a mould, pour in a little jelly, and layer with meat and more jelly.

  2. Add a layer of thin slices of ham or tongue, more jelly, and then chicken again.

  3. In the crevices, place sliced blanched almonds, pistachio nuts, truffles, olives, and capers.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the tender meat that forms the body of the jelly mould and the flavourful broth.
Gelatine
Sets the clarified broth into a firm jelly that holds the layers together when unmoulded.
Egg white and shell (in the method)
Clarifies the broth, collecting particles so the jelly is clear.
Soup herbs
Flavour the broth as the fowl cooks, giving the jelly its base aroma.

The step that matters

Bring the broth to a boil, then add the soaked and strained gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and then cooled to a syrupy state before layering; if it is too hot or cold, layers may not bind or may set cloudy and uneven.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, parsley, lemon, butter, ham, almond, pistachio):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, lemon, butter, ham, almond, pistachio. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes