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Totted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant

A potted meat made by roasting a bird, removing skin and bones, mincing the meat, and seasoning with butter, salt, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Totted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Roast the bird thoroughly until done.

  2. Remove the skin and bones from the breast, wings, and meat.

  3. Mince the meat and pound it smoothly with about ⅓ cup of fresh butter.

Season and finish

  1. Season with coarse sea salt, mace, and cayenne pepper, adding small amounts until the flavor is strong.

  2. Proceed as with other potted meats.

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. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Bird
Supplies the lean meat that is minced and pounded into the paste.
Fresh butter
Adds fat that makes the pounded meat smooth, rich, and moist.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a gentle background heat that lifts the savory flavor.

The step that matters

Season in small amounts. Salt and cayenne are easy to overshoot, and once mixed through the paste they cannot be removed. Cold food tastes less seasoned than warm food, so taste the paste at serving temperature before judging the flavor.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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