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Chicken and Ham Potted

Chicken and ham simmered with mace, cloves, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chicken and Ham Potted

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the chicken

  1. Season the chicken with mace, cloves, and pepper.

  2. Bake the seasoned chicken in a covered pan with water at 350°F (175°C) for about three hours.

  3. Pound the chicken until small, moistening with melted butter or the baking liquor.

Pot the meat

  1. Pound the ham.

  2. Layer the ham with the chicken in potting pans, pressing down tightly and covering with butter.

Make the broth and sauce

  1. Break the bones of the chicken legs.

  2. Boil the broken bones in a little water to extract flavor.

  3. Strain the broth and cool it.

  4. Skim the broth.

  5. Heat the skimmed broth in a saucepan with mace, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  6. Add a bit of butter mixed with flour and ¼ pint of cream.

  7. Stir in the meat and a little mushroom powder.

  8. Before serving, add the juice of a lemon.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main meat, which is slow-baked and pounded to a soft, spreadable texture.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firmer texture layered through the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and seals the top of the potted layers.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth mixture into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the broth sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice before serving. Acid added too early or heated for long can curdle the cream and dull its fresh flavour, so it is added just before serving.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, pepper, butter, ham, flour, cream. 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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