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Chicken in Aspic

A jellied chicken dish made by simmering chicken and aromatics, then setting the broth with gelatin and layering with chicken and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chicken in Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then remove the meat.

  2. Crack the bones and return them to the cooking water.

  3. Add the onion, cloves, mace, and bay leaf; simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and let it cool, removing any fat from the surface.

  5. If the jelly is not thick enough, add ¼ ounce of gelatin and reheat.

  6. Color the jelly with 1 teaspoon of caramel and season with salt and red pepper.

Layer the mold

  1. Cut the chicken into ½-inch square blocks.

  2. In a mold, layer some jelly at the bottom.

  3. Add chicken, celery, and seasoning.

  4. Continue layering with jelly, chicken, and seasoning until all ingredients are used.

  5. Cover with the remaining jelly and let it cool completely.

Serve

  1. Turn the mold out onto a bed of watercress or lettuce.

  2. Garnish with finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, first the whites, then the yolks.

  3. Serve with a bowl of mayonnaise dressing, and optionally garnish with olives and radishes.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together167 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 meat that is set in the jelly as the main filling.
Gelatin
Helps the broth set firmly into a sliceable jelly when it is not thick enough.
Caramel
Colors the jelly a golden brown without changing its flavor much.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh texture contrast within the set jelly.

The step that matters

Cooling the mold completely. The jelly must cool and fully set before turning out; unmolding early can cause it to collapse or slump because gelatin needs time to firm as it cools.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, clove, gelatin, pepper, celery, watercress):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, clove, gelatin, pepper, celery, watercress. 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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