Name: Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant
Ingredients: 1 bird (chicken, partridge, or pheasant); ⅓ cup fish butter (or less if meat is of proper consistency); coarse sea salt (to taste); mace (to taste); cayenne pepper (to taste)

Why it works: Chicken and fish work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant

Ingredients

1 bird (chicken, partridge, or pheasant)
⅓ cup fish butter (or less if meat is of proper consistency)
coarse sea salt (to taste)
mace (to taste)
cayenne pepper (to taste)

Directions

Prepare the meat

Roast the bird thoroughly until done.
Remove the flesh from the breast, wings, and merrythought, and take off the skin.

Pot the meat

Mince the meat and pound it smoothly with fish butter.
Season with salt, mace, and cayenne, adding small portions until well-flavored.
Proceed as with other potted meats.

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.

Chicken + fishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together190 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Fish + macetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together586 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Provides the main lean meat that is pounded into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Fish butter: Adds fat and moisture so the minced meat pounds into a smooth, spreadable paste.