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Pressed Chicken

A dish of boiled chicken meat pressed into a loaf, served sliced with lemon or cucumber pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in a very little water until done.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and discard the skin.

Press and set

  1. Chop the meat and season with salt.

  2. Press the mixture into a large bowl.

  3. Add the cooking liquid.

  4. Place a weight on top.

  5. Once cold, cut into slices.

Serve

  1. Serve with sliced lemon or cucumber pickle.

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. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Chicken + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of meat that holds together when pressed and cooled.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the pressed meat as it sets.

The step that matters

Place a weight on top. Pressing while the meat cools squeezes out excess liquid and packs the pieces together, so the set slices hold their shape instead of crumbling.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon. 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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