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Pressed Chicken

A dish of shredded chicken pressed in a mold with optional garnishes, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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, or add celery while cooking.

  4. Reduce the liquid to 1 cup.

Mold and press

  1. Grease a mold with butter and decorate with slices of hard-boiled egg, truffles, pickles, and olives if desired.

  2. Pack the shredded chicken into the mold, alternating light and dark meat.

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

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

Serve

  1. To serve, unmold and 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 main body of the dish and, once cooled, the firm meat that holds the set shape.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Its natural gelatin sets as it cools, binding the shredded meat into a sliceable block.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, contrasting white and yolk to the decorated layer and the presentation.

The step that matters

Reduce the liquid to 1 cup. The liquid must be concentrated enough to gel when chilled. Too much water leaves the pressed chicken loose and unable to hold its shape when unmolded.

Swap the celery

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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