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Pressed Chicken

Pressed Chicken is a dish made by stewing chicken, adding flour, and pressing the meat into a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces and stew until very tender with the bay leaf, onion, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add flour and let it boil until the meat slips from the bones.

  3. Drain the chicken from the gravy and mix the dark and light meat together.

Press and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a shaped mold and let it cool.

  2. Slice and serve when cold.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the meat that becomes tender and is pressed into a firm shape.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that helps bind the pressed meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavor and a softer mouthfeel to the meat.
Gelatin
Sets as it cools, helping the pressed chicken hold its shape when sliced.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat slips from the bones. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in the chicken so it becomes tender. If the meat is undercooked it will be tough and will not hold together well once pressed and cooled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More pressed chicken recipes

with Egg 3 See all 141 →

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