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Potted Meats and Fish

A preserved dish of roasted game meats mixed with clarified butter and spices, packed in small pots and stored cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potted Meats and Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Roast the game and poultry until well cooked.

  2. Let the meat cool, then remove the skin and bones.

  3. Chop the meat and pound it thoroughly.

Make the potted meat

  1. Gradually add clarified butter, adjusting the amount based on the dryness of the meat.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and black pepper to taste.

  3. Transfer the mixture into small pots and cover with bladder.

  4. Store in a cold 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.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pheasant + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Pheasant + peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, binding the pounded meat into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Pheasant
Main meat providing the body and flavour of the potted mixture.
Partridge
Main meat adding its own game flavour and firm texture to the mixture.
Grouse
Main meat contributing a distinct game flavour to the blend.

The step that matters

Adding the clarified butter. Butter must be added gradually and checked against the meat's dryness. Too little leaves the pounded meat dry and crumbly, while too much makes it greasy and loose. Adding it slowly lets the meat absorb fat evenly and hold together as a spread.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, butter, pepper. 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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