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Chicken Brawn

A gelatinous chicken dish made with meat, eggs, and seasonings set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Prepare the fowl for cooking, saving all the giblets.

  2. Scald the feet and head, then skin them.

  3. Cook the fowl with the giblets until tender.

Make the set meat

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and chop finely.

  2. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine in a little warm water.

  4. Mix the chopped meat with the gelatine, eggs, and seasonings.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and natural jelly-rich stock that the brawn is built from.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Eggs
Bind the chopped meat and help the mixture hold together when set.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine in a little warm water. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before mixing, otherwise it forms lumps and sets unevenly. Soaking it first softens the granules so they dissolve smoothly in warm water.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, ham, mace, parsley, white pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, mace, parsley, white 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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