Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Chicken Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the broth
Pound the cleaned chicken, bones included.
Boil the chicken in 1 gallon of water with ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.
Reduce and strain
Tie the rice in a cloth and add it to the pot until soft.
Remove the rice and continue boiling the liquid until it reduces to 1 pint.
Strain the jelly from the chicken and let it cool.
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.
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Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,769 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Bones and connective tissue release gelatin that sets the liquid to a jelly as it cools.
The step that matters
Reducing the liquid to 1 pint. Boiling down concentrates the dissolved gelatin, so the liquid has enough to set into a firm jelly when cooled. Reducing too little leaves it loose, while reducing too far can make it overly thick and hard to strain.
“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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