Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Chicken

A dish of shredded chicken pressed into a mold with seasoned liquid and garnished with greens and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in minimal water until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the skin and fat, then shred the meat.

  3. Season the cooking liquid with salt, pepper, and celery salt, or add celery while cooking.

  4. Reduce the liquid to 1 cup.

Assemble the mold

  1. Butter a mold and decorate the bottom with slices of hard-boiled egg, truffles, pickles, and olives if desired.

  2. Layer the shredded chicken in the mold, alternating light and dark meat.

  3. Pour the seasoned liquid over each layer until all is used.

  4. Press down with a weight and refrigerate until cold.

Serve

  1. To serve, unmold and garnish with lettuce, parsley, watercress, halved hard-boiled eggs, radishes, or olives.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, with meat that sets firmly when the liquid cools.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Becomes the seasoned jelly that binds the layers together as it chills.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add visible structure and mild richness to the decorated bottom and garnish.

The step that matters

Reduce the liquid to 1 cup. The liquid holds the pressed chicken together, so it needs to be concentrated enough that it sets when cold. Too much liquid leaves the mold loose and watery.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, egg, truffle, olive, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, egg, truffle, olive, lettuce. 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.

More pressed chicken recipes

with Egg 3 See all 141 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes