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Pressed Chicken

Pressed chicken is boiled whole chickens that are shredded and seasoned, then served with the cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the cut-up chickens in a kettle with a tight cover.

  2. Add 2 cups of water, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook until the meat easily separates from the bones.

Prepare and set

  1. Remove the meat from skin, bone, and gristle, and chop it for chicken salad.

  2. Season the chopped meat well and place it in a dish.

  3. Pour the remaining cooking juice over the meat.

  4. Let it cool; it will jelly and can be sliced for serving.

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. 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 meat that is chopped, seasoned, and set in the dish.
Water
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the juices poured over the meat.

The step that matters

Let it cool. The natural gelatin from the bones and skin sets the cooking juices as they cool, so the dish jellies. Cooling fully before slicing lets the gelatin firm up enough to hold clean slices.

“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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