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Pressed Chicken

Tender chicken mixed with seasonings, gelatin, and hard‑boiled eggs, pressed into a loaf and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Simmer the fowl until tender.

  2. Remove bones and tough skins.

  3. Let the chicken cool.

  4. Cut into very small pieces, leaving some skin cut very fine.

Make the set mixture

  1. Reduce the cooking liquid to 1 cup.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Add butter, pepper, salt, paprika, and lemon juice.

  4. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  5. Stir the gelatin into the meat mixture.

Press and serve

  1. Pack the mixture into buttered baking powder boxes.

  2. Press the mixture down firmly.

  3. Place slices of hard boiled egg in the bottom and throughout the box.

  4. Press until firm.

  5. Slice the loaf.

  6. Serve with a few daisies on the platter.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Fowl
Provides the meat that forms the body of the pressed loaf.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled meat mixture so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Cooking liquid
Adds savory flavor and moisture, and its gelatin-rich reduction helps the loaf bind.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a firm, contrasting texture and visible pattern inside each slice.

The step that matters

Press the mixture down firmly. Firm pressing removes air pockets and packs the chopped meat together, so the set loaf holds its shape and slices cleanly.

“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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