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Pressed Chicken

Boiled chicken that becomes jelly when cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the cut-up chickens in a kettle with a tight cover to retain steam.

  2. Add 2 cups of water, salt, and pepper over the chicken.

  3. Cook until the meat easily separates from the bones.

Prepare and set

  1. Remove skin, bone, and gristle, then chop the meat as for chicken salad.

  2. Season well and place in a dish.

  3. Pour the remaining cooking juice over the meat.

  4. Let it cool; it will jelly and can be sliced or served in shape.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the meat and bones that give the dish its body and flavor.
Water
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the juices that set into jelly as they cool.

The step that matters

Cook until the meat easily separates from the bones. Cooking long enough breaks down collagen from the connective tissue and bones into gelatin, which is what lets the juices set into jelly when cooled. Undercooked chicken yields a weaker set.

“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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