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To Pot Chicken with Ham

A pot dish of chicken, ham, and red beef or tongue simmered with mace, white pepper, sea salt, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

To Pot Chicken with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meats

  1. Pound the white meat of a cold fowl in a marble mortar.

  2. Season with mace, white pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Pound a piece of ham (both fat and lean) and red beef or tongue.

  4. Season the ham and beef with pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the meats alternately in a jar, pressing them closely.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

Finish

  1. When cold, cover with clarified 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

White meat of a cold fowl
Pounded into a fine paste, it forms the soft, tender body of the potted meat.
Ham (fat and lean)
Adds savoury flavour, and its fat keeps the layered meat moist as it bakes.
Red beef or tongue
Contributes rich, meaty flavour and colour to the layers.
Clarified butter
Sealed over the cold meat, it excludes air and helps preserve the potted dish.

The step that matters

Pressing the meats closely in the jar. Packing the layers tightly removes air pockets, so the finished pot holds together in a smooth, even texture and keeps better once sealed with butter.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mace, ham, beef, pepper, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mace, ham, beef, pepper, butter. 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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