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Pressed Chicken

A dish of shredded chicken pressed into a mould with a reduced cooking liquid, served chilled with garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in minimal water until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Remove the skin and fat, then shred the meat.

  3. Season the cooking liquid with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  4. Add celery while cooking, if desired.

  5. Reduce the liquid to 1 cup.

Assemble the mould

  1. Grease a mould with butter.

  2. Decorate the mould with hard-boiled egg slices, truffles, pickles, and olives if desired.

  3. Pack the shredded chicken into the mould, alternating light and dark meat.

  4. Pour the reduced liquid over each layer of meat until all is used.

  5. Press down with a weight and refrigerate until cold.

Unmould and serve

  1. Unmould the pressed chicken.

  2. Garnish with lettuce, parsley, watercress, halved hard-boiled eggs, radishes, or olives.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is shredded and packed to form the set loaf.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Reduced and poured over each layer, it moistens the meat and binds it as it cools.
Celery
Adds a mild aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Press down with a weight and refrigerate until cold. Pressing squeezes out excess air and liquid so the layers compact and bind; the reduced liquid gelatinises as it chills, holding the loaf together when unmoulded.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter, egg, truffle, olive, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter, egg, truffle, olive, lettuce. 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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