Name: Chicken and Ham Potted
Ingredients: pieces of chicken; mace; cloves; pepper; water; melted butter; ham

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.

Season the chicken with mace, cloves, and pepper, then bake in a covered pan with water at 350°F (175°C) for about three hours.
Pound the chicken until small, moistening with melted butter or the baking liquid.
Pound the ham and layer it with the chicken in a potting pan, pressing down tightly.
Cover the mixture with melted butter.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper 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

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, clove, pepper, butter, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.