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Preserve

Potted Chicken

Chicken pieces bound with butter and spices, baked in a glass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potted Chicken

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 ↓

Potted Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the chicken pieces with butter, salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg until it forms a small paste.

Pot and seal

  1. Pack the mixture closely into jelly glasses.

  2. Cover the packed chicken with clarified butter.

  3. Optionally, add a few slices of ham for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the paste and gives it its meaty body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps bind the pounded chicken into a smooth paste.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the chicken.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet-spiced aroma that complements the chicken and butter.

The step that matters

Pounding the chicken with butter. The chicken must be pounded until fine and evenly mixed with the butter. Butter coats the meat fibers and makes the paste smooth and spreadable, while leftover lumps can leave a grainy texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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