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Potted Meat, Game, or Fish

A preserved dish of cold meat, game, or fish served with herbs, parsley, and bread or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potted Meat, Game, or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Warm the outsides of the molds slightly.

  2. Turn out the potted meat to serve.

Serve

  1. Garnish with branches of savory herbs.

  2. Cut thin slices.

  3. Lay them in a dish, decorated with green parsley.

  4. Spread between thin slices of bread.

  5. Serve with dry toast.

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. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  3. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body and bulk of the potted meat.
Savoury herbs
Add aromatic flavour and a fresh note to the meat.
Bread
Carries the sliced meat and adds a soft, neutral base.
Dry toast
Adds a crisp, dry contrast to the moist meat.

The step that matters

Warm the outsides of the molds slightly. Brief warming softens the fat or jelly binding the meat to the mold so it releases cleanly. Heating too long melts the outer layer, which can cause the shape to slump or break.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread. 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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