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Cold Chicken Shape

A chilled chicken dish shaped with ham, eggs, and garnished with lemon, beetroot, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Chicken Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Simmer the chicken gently in water or thin stock with seasonings until tender.

  2. Remove the bones and cut the meat into pieces.

Assemble the shape

  1. Add pepper, salt, and lemon juice to the meat.

  2. Layer the meat and chopped ham alternately in a mold.

  3. Add layers of sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Dissolve gelatine in the chicken broth and strain it.

  5. Pour the strained liquid over the meat mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Refrigerate until set, then turn out and garnish with lemon, beetroot, and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + beetroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and, when simmered, the broth used for the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the strained broth into a firm jelly that holds the layers together when turned out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the meat.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild layer that contrasts with the meat in each slice.

The step that matters

Dissolve gelatine in the chicken broth and strain it. Gelatine must dissolve fully and the liquid must be strained clear, otherwise lumps or cloudiness will spoil the set and appearance of the jelly.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

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