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Potted Chicken

Potted Chicken is a preserved chicken made by pounding meat with butter and spices, then packing into jars and covering with clarified butter.

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 meat into small pieces.

  2. Pound the meat well with the butter until smooth.

  3. Gradually sprinkle in the salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg while continuing to pound.

Pot and store

  1. Pack the mixture into small jars.

  2. Cover the top with clarified butter, about ¼ inch thick.

  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.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 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. Pepper + macetop 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).

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

Cold roast fowl
Forms the bulk of the paste and provides the main savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture when pounded with the meat.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding in the seasonings gradually. Adding salt, cayenne, mace and nutmeg slowly while pounding lets them distribute evenly through the fat and meat, so no pocket of spice or salt remains in the finished paste.

Swap the mace

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

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

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