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Chicken Jelly

A gelatinous dish made by simmering a whole chicken until the broth thickens and sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the chicken and soak it in cold water for 1 hour.

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken in a kettle with 3 pints of cold water and salt.

  2. Boil slowly until the meat falls from the bones and the water reduces to 1 pint.

  3. Add black pepper and strain the broth through thin muslin into a mold.

Set and serve

  1. Let it cool and harden.

  2. Once firm, remove the fat and serve the jelly in thin slices with bread or crackers.

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. 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

Chicken
Collagen from the bones and connective tissue dissolves into the broth, which sets into a jelly as it cools.
Water
Carries dissolved gelatin and flavor from the chicken, and its reduction concentrates the broth for a firmer set.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the water reduces to 1 pint. Gentle simmering draws collagen out of the bones and concentrates the broth. Too little reduction leaves it too weak to set, while a hard boil can cloud the liquid.

“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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