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Pressed Chicken

A dish made by boiling chicken, separating dark and white meat, and pressing them into a loaf with a jelly-like stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones.

  3. Chop the meat finely, keeping dark and white meat separate.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the cooking liquid down until it thickens to a jelly-like consistency.

Layer and press

  1. In a deep buttered dish, layer the dark meat.

  2. Season the dark meat with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the dark meat with the thickened liquid.

  4. Add a layer of white meat.

  5. Season the white meat.

  6. Cover with more thickened liquid.

  7. Use the liquid when cold.

  8. Press the mixture with a weight.

  9. Let it mold firmly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 pressed dish.
Cooking liquid (in the method)
Thickens into a jelly that binds the chopped meat together when cold.

The step that matters

Boil the cooking liquid down until it thickens. The liquid must reduce enough to set into a firm jelly when cold. Gelatin from the chicken sets the jelly, so under-reduced liquid will not hold the pressed layers together.

“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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