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Potted Chicken, Grouse, or Other Birds

A slow-cooked dish of chicken or other birds simmered in a jar with onion, salt, pepper, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Potted Chicken, Grouse, or Other Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. If the bird is large, cut it into small pieces; otherwise, cook it whole.

  2. In a pan, sauté the bird with the onion until lightly browned.

Season and cook

  1. Add salt, pepper, brown flour, and water to the pan.

  2. Transfer everything into a jar and cook slowly until very tender.

  3. If using raw meat, cook in the jar for 4 hours; if pre-cooked, for 2 to 2.5 hours.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the protein that becomes tender and rich during slow cooking.
Brown flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly toasted sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it browns in the pan.

The step that matters

Slow cooking in the jar. Long, gentle heat breaks down connective tissue in the meat, making it very tender. Cooking too hot or too briefly can leave the meat tough, so the time must match whether the meat was raw or pre-cooked.

Swap the onion

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

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

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