Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Chicken with Ham

Chicken, ham, and red beef or tongue cooked together in a pot, finished with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

To Pot Chicken with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Pound the white meat of a cold fowl in a marble mortar.

  2. Season with mace, white pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Pound the piece of ham (fat and lean) and the red beef or tongue.

  4. Season the meat with pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the meats alternately in a jar, pressing them closely.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours.

Finish

  1. When cold, cover with clarified butter.

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 + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 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. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

White meat of a cold fowl
Forms the pounded base of the meat mixture, giving it a smooth, fine texture.
Piece of ham (fat and lean)
Adds savoury flavour, and its fat contributes moisture and richness to the pounded meat.
Red beef or tongue
Adds meaty flavour and colour to the layered meat.
Clarified butter
Seals the top, excluding air and helping preserve the cooked meat.

The step that matters

Pressing the layers closely in the jar. Packing the meats tightly removes air pockets, so the finished dish holds together and sets with an even, dense texture rather than crumbling or leaving gaps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mace, ham, beef, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes