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Pressed Chicken

Shredded chicken mixed with reduced broth, pressed into a mold, served with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the stock

  1. Return the skin and bones to the pot and boil until the liquid reduces to about 1 pint.

  2. Strain the liquid and season to taste, adding chopped mushrooms if desired.

Press and serve

  1. Mix the seasoned liquid with the chicken and place in a mold.

  2. Cover with a flat lid and press with a light weight overnight.

  3. Turn out from the mold, garnish with lemon and parsley, and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 is set into a firm, sliceable mass.
Chicken skin and bones
Boiled down to make a concentrated liquid that gels and binds the pressed meat.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquid to about 1 pint. The cooked-down liquid supplies the gelatin and flavor that hold the pressed chicken together. If it is too thin, the mass will not set firmly when cooled and pressed.

“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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