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Pressed Chicken

A dish of tender chicken mixed with gravy, butter, pepper, salt, and gelatin, then pressed and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 very tender.

  2. Remove the bones, gristle, skin, and fat.

Make the gravy mixture

  1. Boil the gravy down to 1 cup.

  2. Add butter, pepper, and salt to the gravy.

  3. Dissolve gelatine in water and add to the mixture.

Press and set

  1. Pick the chicken into small pieces, do not chop.

  2. Heat the chicken thoroughly with the gravy.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pan and place a light weight on top.

  4. Slice when cold.

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

Chicken
Provides the meat that forms the body of the pressed dish.
Chicken gravy
Supplies moisture and concentrated savory flavour to the finished dish.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture as it cools so the pressed slices hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the gravy.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding it. Gelatine only sets properly when it is completely dissolved and evenly distributed. Lumps or undissolved granules leave weak spots, so the slices may crumble or fail to hold together when cut.

“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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