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Chicken Jelly

Chicken jelly is a chilled, set broth made from a whole chicken, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cook the chicken in enough water to cover it slightly.

  2. Let it stew gently until the meat falls from the bones and the broth reduces to about 1 pint.

  3. Season the broth with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Strain the broth through a colander and then through a coarse cloth.

  5. Cook the strained broth over the fire for a few more minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the broth into an earthen dish to harden.

  2. Refrigerate until cold and firm.

  3. Serve cold in slices, or make sandwiches with thinly sliced buttered bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Chicken
Its meat and connective tissue release flavour and body into the broth as it stews.
Water
Extracts flavour from the chicken and forms the broth that will set.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the buttered bread served with the jelly.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to about 1 pint. Too much water leaves the broth too weak to set firmly, while over-reducing makes it overly salty and dense. Chicken broth sets because collagen gelatin dissolves during stewing and firms as it cools, so the concentration must be right before chilling.

“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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