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Pressed Chicken

Shredded chicken mixed with butter, pepper, allspice, and egg, pressed into a mold and served with garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Stew the chickens slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the chickens and chop the meat finely.

  3. Boil down the cooking liquid until it reduces to 1 cup.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the butter, pepper, allspice, and beaten egg to the liquid; stir into the chopped meat.

Press and serve

  1. Slice the hard-boiled egg and layer it in a mold, then press the meat mixture on top.

  2. Garnish with celery tops or parsley when 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and cooking liquid that form the body of the pressed loaf.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pressed meat from drying out.
Beaten egg
Binds the chopped meat and liquid together so the mixture holds its shape.

The step that matters

Boil down the cooking liquid to 1 cup. Reducing the broth concentrates its flavour and gelatin, so the pressed mixture sets firm rather than watery or loose when cooled.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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