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Pressed Chicken

Boiled chicken meat seasoned with salt, pepper, dry mustard, and butter, then pressed under a weight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in minimal water until the bones come out.

  2. Remove the chicken and keep the broth hot.

  3. Strain out all bones, including small ones, without removing the skin.

Season and mix

  1. Chop the chicken meat moderately fine.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and dry mustard.

  3. Add butter to the hot broth and mix it with the meat.

Press

  1. Transfer the mixture to a bowl or pan and let it cool.

  2. Place a plate and weight on top to compress the meat.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish, and pressing binds its pieces into a firm, sliceable mass.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the meat a moist, silky texture as it sets.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Add butter to the hot broth. The butter must melt into hot broth so it spreads through the meat. If the broth has cooled, the fat can set in lumps instead of coating the chicken evenly, leaving the pressed texture uneven.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, butter. 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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