Skip to main content
Main

Potted Meats and Fish

A dish of roasted game meat mixed with butter, spices, and sealed in small pots for storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 or poultry until fully cooked and allow to cool.

  2. Remove the skin and cut the meat from the bones, discarding the bones and skin.

Make the potted meat

  1. Chop the meat and pound it thoroughly, gradually adding the butter.

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

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

Store

  1. Store in a cold place until ready to serve.

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. Pheasant + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant, partridge, grouse, or poultry
Provides the main body of the potted meat once cooked and pounded.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pounded meat a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Pound the meat while adding the butter. Adding butter gradually while pounding lets the fat emulsify into the finely broken meat, giving a smooth, spreadable texture. Adding it all at once can leave the mixture greasy and grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes