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Pressed Chicken No. 1

A dish of tender chicken pressed with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken and place it in a kettle with water.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then cover tightly.

  3. Cook until tender, then remove the meat from the bones and chop it into pea-sized bits.

Press and set

  1. Pack the chopped meat into a quart bowl.

  2. Thicken the remaining juice in the kettle with flour and pour it over the chicken.

  3. Cover with a plate and place a heavy weight on top while hot.

  4. For best results, do not cut the pressed chicken until the next day.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Chicken + coffeetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Forms the body of the dish; cooking until tender and pressing bind the pieces into a firm loaf.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juice so it sets into a more cohesive jelly around the chicken.

The step that matters

Pressing the hot chicken under a heavy weight. Pressing while the meat and juice are still hot lets the gelatin from the bones and skin set as the mixture cools, binding the chopped chicken into a firm, sliceable block. Cutting too early can cause it to crumble.

“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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