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Chicken Loaf

Chicken loaf is a baked chicken mixture formed into a loaf and served with lettuce and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Chicken Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in minimal water until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the skin, fat, gristle, and bones, then return the meat to the pot.

Season and mold

  1. Add butter, coarse sea salt, black pepper, celery salt, and vinegar or lemon juice to taste.

  2. Heat the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Slice the hard boiled egg and place it in the bottom of a plain oblong mold.

  4. Pour the hot chicken mixture into the mold, ensuring there is not too much liquid.

Set and serve

  1. Allow to cool until hardened, then serve on a platter garnished with lettuce and olives.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the meat that is cooked, shredded and set into the loaf.
Hard boiled egg
Adds a sliced, firm contrast inside the loaf when it is cut.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the chicken mixture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the chicken.

The step that matters

Limit the liquid before molding. Too much liquid in the hot chicken mixture keeps the loaf from setting firmly as it cools, so it can crumble or slump when sliced.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, vinegar, egg, lettuce, olive. 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.

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