Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Chicken

A dish of tender chicken mixed with gravy, butter, and gelatin, pressed into a loaf and sliced when cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender.

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

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

Make the gravy base

  1. Boil the gravy down to 1 cup.

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

  3. Dissolve gelatin in water and add to the gravy.

Press and set

  1. Heat the chicken thoroughly with the gravy.

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

  3. 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).

  4. Chicken + gelatintop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Butter + gelatintop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the meaty texture once pressed and sliced.
Chicken gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor that keeps the pressed chicken from drying out.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture as it cools so the pressed chicken holds together when sliced.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the gravy.

The step that matters

Dissolve gelatin in water and add to the gravy. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before it goes into the gravy, otherwise it forms lumps and will not set evenly. It sets as the mixture cools, which is what holds the pressed chicken together for slicing.

“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