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Potted Fowl

A preserved meat made by mixing roasted fowl with butter, spices, and 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 ↓

Potted Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Weigh the meat from the cold roast fowl.

  2. In a bowl, combine the fowl meat with fresh butter.

  3. Add pounded mace, grated nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Pound the mixture until it becomes a smooth paste.

  5. For added flavor, mix in minced and pounded ham.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the paste into potting pots and cover with clarified butter, about ½ inch thick.

  2. If storing for a long time, tie a bladder over the top.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Roast fowl
Provides the main body of the paste, which is pounded into a spreadable texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the pounded meat become smooth and spreadable.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed fat layer over the paste that helps keep air out.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture until smooth. Thorough pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and blends in the butter, so the paste spreads evenly instead of feeling grainy.

Swap the mace

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

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

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