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Pressed Chicken

Pressed chicken is tender chicken meat pressed into a mold and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones.

Press and serve

  1. Season the meat with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Add enough chicken broth to moisten the mixture well.

  3. Layer the light and dark meat in a mold of your choice.

  4. Once cooled, turn out the pressed chicken and 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. Pepper + buttertop 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, setting into firm slices when pressed and cooled.
Chicken broth
Adds moisture so the pressed meat stays tender and holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, improving flavor and mouthfeel of the meat.

The step that matters

Add enough chicken broth to moisten the mixture well.. Pressed meat dries out and crumbles if it lacks liquid. Enough broth keeps the meat moist and lets it bind into a sliceable block once cooled.

“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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