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Chicken Brawn

A savory dish of chicken bones simmered with water, eggs, ham, parsley, nutmeg, and pepper, layered in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Chicken Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Put the skin and bones back into a saucepan with water and boil until the gravy reduces to about ¾ pint.

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Hard boil the eggs and slice them.

  2. Cut the ham into strips about 1 inch long.

  3. Chop the parsley finely.

Assemble the mold

  1. Rinse a mold or pudding basin with cold water.

  2. Sprinkle a little parsley on the bottom of the mold.

  3. Arrange the slices of egg, chicken, and ham alternately in the mold until all ingredients are used.

  4. Between layers, sprinkle more parsley, a small amount of nutmeg, and black pepper.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. 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

Skin and bones of chicken
Reduced into a gravy that gives the set dish its savory body and binds it together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and visual contrast within the layers.
Lean ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor and texture to the layers.

The step that matters

Reducing the gravy. The liquid must be reduced far enough to have enough gelatin and body to set firmly when cooled. If it stays too thin, the layers will not hold together when the mold is turned out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, ham, parsley, 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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