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Preserve

Potted Ham

Potted Ham is a dish made by soaking, baking, and mincing ham with butter and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potted Ham

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potted Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak the ham for 12 hours, then wipe it dry and trim it.

  2. Wrap the ham in coarse paste and bake at 400°F (200°C) until tender.

  3. Remove the crust and rind, then let the ham cool completely.

  4. Weigh the lean ham after removing skin and fiber, then mince it finely.

Pound and season

  1. In a large mortar, pound the minced ham with fresh butter gradually.

  2. Once three parts beaten, add mace, nutmeg, and cayenne, mixing well.

  3. Keep turning the meat in the mortar to ensure even seasoning.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main meaty flavor and the body of the potted mixture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture once pounded into the meat.
Cold roast veal
Adds mild, delicate meat that softens the texture of the potted mixture.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma that complements the ham and butter.

The step that matters

Pound the ham with butter gradually. Adding butter slowly lets the fat emulsify evenly into the minced meat, giving a smooth texture instead of a greasy or separated one.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, butter, nutmeg. 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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