Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken, sweetbread, eggs, and peppers layered and set with gelatin, served with mayonnaise sauce and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gelatin and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the chickens with the onion and chiltipin peppers until tender.

  2. Boil the sweetbread separately until cooked.

Assemble and set

  1. In a deep dish, layer hard boiled eggs, chicken, sweetbread, and more eggs, alternating layers.

  2. Leave the soup in the kettle and boil with gelatin and chicken bones for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the soup over the layered dish and set aside to cool overnight.

  4. Once set, remove from the dish and serve with mayonnaise sauce and browned crackers.

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. Gelatin + saucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the dish.
Gelatin
Sets the cooled broth into a firm, sliceable mass.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and a mild richness between the layers.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, tender texture contrasting with the chicken.

The step that matters

Pouring the soup over the layered dish. The broth must be hot enough to fill the gaps but it must also be set properly with gelatin. Gelatin only sets when it is cooled, so the dish needs to chill undisturbed overnight for the layers to hold together when unmolded.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg, gelatin, sauce. 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 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes