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Potted Game

A preserved game mixture seasoned and set in clarified butter, served in aspic and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the game

  1. Remove skin and bones from the cold game.

  2. Pound the game in a mortar until fine.

Season and pot

  1. Add the pounded mace, allspice, cayenne, black pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Pound an equal quantity of cold ham or butter and mix thoroughly.

  3. Press the mixture into pots and cover with clarified butter.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, dish it on an aspic and garnish with fresh parsley.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Cold game
Provides the main meat body and rich flavour of the potted mixture.
Cold ham or butter
Adds fat that makes the pounded mixture smooth, spreadable and moist.

The step that matters

Pounding the game until fine. If the meat is left coarse, the potted mixture will be grainy and won't blend evenly with the fat. Thorough pounding breaks the fibres down so the seasoning and fat distribute through the whole mass.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, sugar, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, sugar, ham. 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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