Skip to main content
Main

Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant

A preserved dish made by roasting a whole bird, mincing the meat, and mixing with butter and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and prepare

  1. Roast the bird until thoroughly cooked, ensuring no gravy remains.

  2. Remove the flesh from the breast, wings, and meat, discarding the skin.

Make the potted meat

  1. Mince the meat and pound it smoothly with the butter.

  2. Season with salt, mace, and cayenne, adding small amounts until well-flavored.

  3. If using tongue, boil it until tender, then mince and pound it with 4 ounces of 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. 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the potted meat, giving it its substance and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the pounded meat become smooth and spreadable.
Tongue
Adds extra meat and a richer, more tender texture when used.

The step that matters

Season with salt, mace, and cayenne in small amounts. Salt and spices become stronger as the mixture is pounded and chilled, so tasting and adding gradually prevents an overly seasoned result.

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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes