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Pressed Chicken

Pressed chicken is a dish made by boiling chicken, removing meat, reducing stock, adding gelatin and caraway seeds, then pressing and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and caraway work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 291 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Boil the chickens in minimal water until they begin to fall apart.

Make the pressed chicken

  1. Scrape the meat from the bones, keeping the white meat coarse and the dark meat fine.

  2. Simmer the remaining liquid until reduced, then return the chicken to the pot.

  3. Add the gelatin and caraway seeds, remove from heat, and pour into a bowl or pan.

  4. Place a plate on top as a weight and cool in a refrigerator.

  5. Slice for serving.

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 + carawaytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together291 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Chicken + carawaytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Chicken + gelatintop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Pepper + gelatintop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that forms the body of the dish.
Gelatin
Sets the cooking liquid so the chicken holds together when cooled and sliced.

The step that matters

Simmer the remaining liquid until reduced. The cooking liquid is the source of the set. Reducing it concentrates the natural gelatin and flavor from the bones and meat, so the pressed chicken firms properly when chilled.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

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

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