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Pressed Chicken

A dish of finely chopped chicken mixed with butter, bread crumbs, and broth, pressed into a dish and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove all bones and chop the meat very fine.

  3. Season the chopped chicken with salt, pepper, and butter.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the chicken broth to the bread crumbs softened with hot water.

  2. Mix in the chopped chicken and heat the mixture.

Press and serve

  1. Press the mixture into a dish and let it cool.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 and protein of the dish, and sets firm as it cools.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add body, helping the mixture hold together when pressed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moister texture.

The step that matters

Press the mixture into a dish and let it cool.. Firm pressing removes air gaps so the pieces bind together. As it cools, collagen from the boiled chicken and starch from the soaked crumbs set, so the pressed mixture holds its shape when sliced.

“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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