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Pressed Chicken

A chilled mixture of finely chopped chicken, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and bread crumbs, pressed into a bowl.

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 ↓

Pressed Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove all bones and chop the meat very fine.

Season and combine

  1. Season the chopped chicken with salt, pepper, and plenty of butter.

  2. Soften the bread crumbs in hot water and add to the chicken mixture.

  3. Combine with the broth from boiling the chicken and heat through.

Set

  1. Press the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate until cold.

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
Provides the meat that packs together and holds its shape once pressed and chilled.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the chopped meat into a cohesive mass.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, keeping the chilled slices tender.

The step that matters

Press firmly and chill until fully cold. As the broth and chicken cool, their natural gelatin sets and binds the chopped meat into a sliceable block. Pressing packs the mixture tightly, and under-chilling leaves it loose and crumbly.

“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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