Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Chicken

A dish of shredded chicken pressed into a mold with seasoned liquid and garnished with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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. Cook the liquid down to 1 cup.

Mold and press

  1. Grease a mold and decorate it with slices of hard‑boiled egg, truffles, pickles, and olives if desired.

  2. Pack the shredded chicken into the mold, alternating light and dark meat.

  3. Pour the seasoned liquid over each layer of meat 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

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

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 sets into a firm, sliceable mass when the liquid cools.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Carries seasoning and, once reduced and chilled, gels to bind the shredded meat together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, pale contrast to the meat and decorate the outside of the mold.

The step that matters

Cook the liquid down to 1 cup. The liquid must be concentrated so its natural gelatin and flavor set firmly when cold; too much water leaves the pressed chicken loose and bland.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, celery, egg, truffle, olive, parsley. 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