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Chicken Forcemeat

Chicken forcemeat is a boiled chicken dish seasoned with salt and pepper and served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,449 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Chicken Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the chicken meat from the bone and sprinkle it lightly with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the seasoned chicken in a well-buttered soup plate.

Cook

  1. Prepare a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Place the soup plate on top of the boiling water.

  3. Cover with another plate or basin.

  4. Cook gently for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with its own gravy.

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 + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken meat
Forms the main body of the dish, setting into a soft, tender mass as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the chicken stay tender and keeping it from sticking to the plate.

The step that matters

Cook gently over boiling water. Gentle, indirect heat from the steam sets the chicken slowly and evenly. A hard boil or direct heat can toughen the meat and make it dry or rubbery.

“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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