Name: Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, partridge, or pheasant; ⅓ cup fresh butter; salt to taste; ¼ teaspoon mace; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

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

Prepare the bird

Roast the bird thoroughly until well done.
Remove the flesh from the breast, wings, and merrythought, discarding the bones and skin.
Mince the meat and weigh it.

Make the potted meat

Add about one third of the weight in fresh butter.
Season with salt, mace, and cayenne pepper, mixing until the meat has a proper consistency.

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.

Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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, partridge, or pheasant: Provides the lean meat that is minced and seasoned to form the potted mixture.
Fresh butter: Adds fat and moisture, giving the minced meat a smooth, rich texture.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the meat.
Cayenne pepper: Adds a mild, sharp heat that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Mixing the meat with butter and seasoning. Mixing until the meat has a proper consistency matters because the butter must be worked evenly into the minced meat. Under-mixing leaves greasy pockets and uneven texture, while over-working can make the mixture pasty.

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Garlicfits better
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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Potted Chicken, Partridge, or Pheasant