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Pressed Chicken with Parsley
Pressed chicken is made of the light and dark meat of a chicken which has been boiled (in very little water), highly seasoned, moistened with the chicken liquor, and pressed into a mould which has been buttered, and decorated with slices of hard boiled eggs. Serve very cold.
This is a method sketch rather than a numbered recipe, which was normal for the sandwich chapters of turn-of-the-century books. The hinge is the cooking liquid: reduced properly it sets the loaf without added gelatine, and if it is thin the chicken will crumble when sliced.
- QuantitiesThe recipe specifies none. As a rough guide, a 4-5 lb chicken will give enough picked meat for a standard loaf pan. Keep light and dark meat mixed as the recipe directs; all breast makes a dry, pale loaf.
- "Very little water"This is deliberate: the less water, the more concentrated the resulting liquor. Use only as much as the pot needs, strain the liquor after cooking, and reduce it until it is noticeably thick and sets when cooled on a chilled spoon.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockA simmer of 1 to 1 1/2 hours for a whole bird, until the thigh reads 175F and the meat pulls easily from the bone. A rolling boil tightens the muscle and gives you stringy meat.
- "Highly seasoned"Season the picked meat aggressively while it is still warm, and taste it warm: salt, plenty of black pepper, a little mace or nutmeg, and the chopped parsley of the title. Cold food reads as underseasoned, so what tastes correct hot will taste flat from the refrigerator.
- The mouldButter the pan and lay the sliced hard-boiled egg in before packing, so the slices show when the loaf is turned out. Pack the meat in hard, then weight the top with a plate and a couple of tins.
- ChillingRefrigerate under weight for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight, then unmould and slice thin with a long knife. Originally this would have set in a cool larder; today it goes into the refrigerator within two hours of cooking and keeps three or four days.
- ServingCut thin slices for sandwiches on buttered bread, with a little more chopped parsley or a thin smear of mayonnaise. The slices firm up further on a second day, which is when they cut cleanest.
Pressed meats belong to the era before reliable home refrigeration, when a cooked bird boned, packed under a weight and set in its own gelatine kept far better and travelled far better than a roast. The technique is the domestic cousin of the butcher's brawn and of French fromage de t tilde{}te: no gelatine is added, the bones and skin presumably supplying enough of their own, which may be why the recipe insists on very little water. Such preparations were the answer to picnic baskets, railway journeys, church suppers and the afternoon tea table, where a firm, sliceable loaf could be counted on. The decoration with hard-boiled egg slices against the mould is a small piece of Victorian kitchen showmanship, the same instinct that produced aspics ringed with cut vegetables, and it survived in American community cookbooks well into the mid-twentieth century.