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Pressed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken meat pressed into a mold and served sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the fowl in minimal water until very tender.

  2. Remove the skin and pick the meat apart, mixing dark and light meat together.

Season and combine

  1. Remove the fat from the cooking liquid and season it with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  2. Boil the liquid down to 1 cup and mix it with the chopped meat.

Press and serve

  1. Butter a mold and decorate the bottom and sides with slices of hard boiled eggs.

  2. Pack the meat mixture into the mold and place a weight on top to cool.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Fowl
Provides the meat and the cooking liquid that becomes the moist, flavorful binding for the pressed loaf.
Hard boiled eggs
Used as a decorative layer on the mold, adding visual contrast when the loaf is sliced.

The step that matters

Pack the meat mixture into the mold and place a weight on top to cool. Pressing while the mixture cools lets the gelatin from the reduced liquid set and bind the meat, so the loaf holds its shape when turned out and sliced.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg. 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 →

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