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Pressed Chicken

Pressed Chicken is a shredded chicken dish served with broth, hard boiled eggs, parsley, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender.

  2. Remove all skin and bones, and shred the meat into small bits, mixing light and dark meat together.

Season the broth

  1. Skim fat from the broth, then season with salt, pepper, celery, onion (if using), and lemon juice.

  2. Boil the broth down to 1 pint.

Press and set

  1. In a smooth round dish, arrange sliced hard boiled eggs on the bottom and sides.

  2. Mix the shredded chicken with the broth and pour into the dish.

  3. Cover with a plate that fits and place a weight on top.

  4. Set aside to cool.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out onto a serving dish and garnish with parsley leaves and lemon slices.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 sets into a firm, sliceable body when cooled in its broth.
Broth (in the method)
Carries moisture and gelatin from the boiled chicken, helping the pressed mass hold together when cold.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and a mild, rich contrast to the shredded chicken in each slice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich meat and broth.

The step that matters

Boil the broth down to 1 pint. Reducing the broth concentrates its natural gelatin and flavour, so the mixture sets firmly when cold instead of staying loose and watery.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, celery, lemon, egg, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, celery, lemon, egg, parsley. 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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