Skip to main content
Main

Potted Chicken

Potted Chicken is a dish of ground chicken mixed with butter, spices, and optional ham, packed in jars and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potted Chicken

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Pound the meat well with the butter.

  3. Gradually sprinkle in the salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg while pounding until smooth.

  4. For added flavor, mix in minced ham before packing.

Pot and store

  1. Pack the mixture into small jars.

  2. Cover with clarified butter, about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Store in a dry place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Roast fowl meat
Provides the main body of the spread, bound into a smooth paste by pounding.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the pounded meat become smooth and spreadable.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed top layer that protects the potted meat from air.

The step that matters

Pound the meat until smooth. Pounding the cold meat with butter breaks its fibres into a fine, even paste. Stopping early leaves a coarse texture that does not spread well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, pepper, nutmeg, ham):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, nutmeg, ham. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes