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Potted Chicken

A dish of cooked chicken mixed with butter, spices, and optional ham, then packed and stored in jars.

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 meat into small pieces.

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

  3. Gradually sprinkle in the salt, cayenne pepper, 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 ½ 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. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken meat
Forms the bulk of the paste, giving the potted spread its body and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and when pounded in, makes the chicken smooth and spreadable.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed top layer that helps keep air away from the chicken below.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the chicken.

The step that matters

Pounding the chicken with butter until smooth. Thorough pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres and emulsifies it with the butter, so the spread turns smooth rather than grainy. Seasoning is added gradually so it distributes evenly through the paste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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