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Pressed Chicken

A veal dish cooked slowly, then pressed into a mold with liquid, optionally served with hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place veal in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add chopped onion and sage.

  4. Boil slowly until meat separates from the bone.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. About 30 minutes before done, drain the meat.

Press and set

  1. Chop it while hot.

  2. Slice hard boiled eggs and place them at the bottom of the mold before adding the meat.

  3. Pack the chopped meat into a mold.

  4. Cover with enough cooking liquid to rise when pressed.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 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

Veal
Provides the meat that is cooked, chopped and packed into the mold to form the set loaf.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Moistens the packed meat and, as it sets, binds the pieces into a firm, sliceable loaf.

The step that matters

Cover with enough cooking liquid to rise when pressed. Collagen from the bones and connective tissue dissolves into the broth and gels as it cools, which holds the chopped meat together. Too little liquid leaves the loaf dry and crumbly once set.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sage, pepper, 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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