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Chicken, Potted

A preserved chicken made by mixing roast chicken with ham, butter, spices, and covering with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken, Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gristle and skin from the cold roast chicken and weigh the meat.

  2. For every pound of chicken, mix in ¼ pound of chopped ham, ¼ pound of softened butter, 1 teaspoon of salt, 4 grains of cayenne, 1 teaspoon of ground mace, and ¼ grated nutmeg.

Make and pot

  1. Pound the mixture thoroughly in a mortar until well combined.

  2. Press the mixture into small jars and cover with clarified butter to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  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.

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. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast chicken meat
Provides the main body of the potted mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture once softened and pounded.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the chicken.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture thoroughly. Thorough pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and blends the softened butter evenly through it, giving a smooth spread rather than a grainy or greasy one.

Swap the mace

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

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

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