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Cream Chicken Shape

A chilled gelatin made from chicken stock, milk, and agar agar, shaped like a chicken and served with tomato jelly and mustard greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Agar and mustard share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cream Chicken Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove skin from the chicken and mince the meat.

  2. Season the minced chicken with salt and pepper.

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve Agar Agar jelly in a little cold water over low heat.

  2. Add the jelly from the boiled chicken and milk, heating slowly without boiling.

  3. Beat the mixture well with a fork and strain through a fine sieve into a basin.

  4. Once cool, stir in the minced chicken and optional liver.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into wetted ramekins and refrigerate until set.

  2. To serve, turn out the jelly and decorate with tomato jelly and mustard greens.

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. Agar + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Agar agar jelly
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly when chilled.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour of the jelly.
Remains of a steamed chicken
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Dissolving the Agar Agar over low heat. Agar needs to be fully dissolved in liquid and heated gently; undissolved strands will not set evenly, and vigorous boiling can weaken its gelling power, so the mixture should be heated slowly without boiling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, agar, milk, liver, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, agar, milk, liver, mustard. 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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