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Pressed Chicken

A chilled chicken dish made by cooking chicken, adding broth, gelatin, seasonings, and setting in a mold lined with hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Prepare the broth

  1. Cook the chicken in enough water to cover it until tender.

  2. Boil the broth down to 1 quart.

Set the mold

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water and add it to the chicken broth.

  2. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, chopped celery, red pepper, and salt.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into a mold lined with sliced hard-boiled egg.

  4. Refrigerate until firm.

Serve

  1. To serve, unmold onto a platter and garnish with lettuce.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and the cooked flavour that the broth carries.
Chicken broth
Supplies the savoury liquid that becomes the body of the set mold.
Gelatine
Sets the broth into a firm, sliceable mass once chilled.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a mild vegetal flavour to the set mixture.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds salty, tangy depth that seasons the whole mold.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding it. Gelatine must dissolve completely into the warm broth; undissolved granules leave gritty pockets and uneven setting. Chilling then firms the liquid into a stable gel.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, celery, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, celery, pepper, egg. 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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