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Pressed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken meat pressed into a compact loaf, seasoned with salt and pepper and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and singe the chicken, then cut it into pieces as for a fricassee.

  2. Place the chicken pieces in a kettle with a small amount of water, cover, and boil gently until the meat falls from the bones.

Shape and press

  1. Remove the meat from the kettle with a skimmer, separating the white meat from the dark meat, and scrape all the meat from the bones, discarding the skin.

  2. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

  3. Layer the white and dark meat alternately in a dish, adding a little broth to moisten the layers.

  4. Once all the meat is in the dish, place a plate on top and add a heavy weight.

  5. Set the dish in a cool place to press.

Serve

  1. Slice the pressed chicken for serving and garnish with parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the body of the dish; the meat sets into a firm, sliceable block when pressed.
Broth from cooking chicken
Adds moisture to the layers so the pressed meat stays tender and cohesive.

The step that matters

Layering and pressing the meat. Moisten each layer with broth and press evenly under a weight in a cool place. Dry or unevenly pressed meat will crumble when sliced, and the layers need to bind as the gelatin from the broth sets.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper. 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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