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Fowl, with Ham, Potted

A preserved fowl mixture of ham and chicken, seasoned and set in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,449 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fowl, with Ham, Potted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop together the cooked ham and the meat of the roast chicken.

  2. Pound the mixture in a mortar with the butter.

Make the glaze

  1. Boil down the chicken bones, skin, and gravy; season with salt, pepper, mace, and cayenne.

  2. Reduce the mixture to a glaze and add it to the pounded meat.

Pot and store

  1. Press the mixture into shallow earthen pots.

  2. Cover with clarified butter and store in a cool 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. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

  2. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  3. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Cooked ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firm, meaty texture to the filling.
Chicken meat
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it bulk and a tender, spreadable texture.
Butter
Binds the pounded meat into a smooth paste and adds richness and mouthfeel.
Chicken gravy and bones
Boiled down to a glaze, it concentrates savoury flavour and helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Reducing the chicken bones, skin, and gravy to a glaze. Boiling down the stock concentrates its gelatin and flavour. If reduced too little, the filling stays loose and bland; if over-reduced, it turns overly salty and sticky.

Swap the mace

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

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

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