Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken meat, seasoned with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt, pressed and chilled before slicing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until they are falling apart.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones, discarding the skin.

  3. Chop the meat finely.

Season and press

  1. Return the meat to the kettle with a little of the cooking liquid.

  2. Season well with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Transfer to a dish and press down with a plate and a weight.

  4. Refrigerate until cold, then slice.

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. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked, shredded, and packed into a firm, sliceable loaf.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pressed meat a softer, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Pressing while cold. Pressing the meat while it is still warm and then chilling it lets the gelatin from the cooking liquid set and bind the pieces together. Without even pressure and full chilling, the loaf may crumble when sliced.

“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