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Pressed Chicken

A dish of stewed chicken meat mixed with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, beaten egg, and a hard‑boiled egg, pressed into a dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chickens in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Stew slowly until the meat falls off the bone.

  3. Remove the chickens and chop the meat.

  4. Boil down the cooking liquid until you have 1 cup.

Assemble and press

  1. Add the butter, salt, pepper, parsley, and beaten egg to the liquid and stir into the meat.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled egg and layer it in a dish.

  3. Press the meat mixture into the dish and garnish with celery tops before serving.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that is chopped and pressed into the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pressed meat a softer texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the seasoned liquid and meat together as it sets.

The step that matters

Boil down the cooking liquid until you have 1 cup. The reduced liquid concentrates flavor and gives the pressed mixture enough body to hold together once it cools and sets.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, parsley, egg. 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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