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Chicken, Potted
Take the meat from a cold roast chicken, remove the gristle and skin, and weigh it after it is picked. To every pound of chicken-meat allow a quarter of a pound of ham, a quarter of a pound of butter, a tea-spoonful of salt, four grains of cayenne, one tea-spoonful of salt, four grains of cayenne, one tea-spoonful of pounded mace, and a quarter of a small nutmeg. Pound these thoroughly in a mortar. Press the paste into small jars, and cover it with clarified butter about a quarter of an inch in thickness. Keep it in a dry place. Time, about half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 10d., exclusive of the cold chicken. A little of it should be spread on bread and butter for each person.
This is a potted meat, meant to be sealed under butter and stored unrefrigerated for weeks. That storage method is the whole point of the recipe and it is also the reason it cannot be followed today.
- Why the butter seal is the problemA quarter-inch cap of clarified butter over cooked meat in a jar creates a low-acid, low-oxygen, unrefrigerated environment. That is the set of conditions in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin, and nothing in the recipe — no acid, no measured cure, no heat process — prevents it. The toxin is not detectable by smell or taste.
- No safe temperature is ever reachedThe chicken is already cooked and cold, the ham is cooked, and the pounded paste is never heated again. Any organisms introduced during picking, pounding and potting stay in the jar and are then given weeks in the dark at room temperature.
- "Keep it in a dry place"In a Victorian house this would most likely mean a cold larder rather than a warm cupboard, and pots of this kind were generally not kept long once broached. A modern kitchen cupboard is far warmer than the room the author had in mind. If you want potted chicken, follow a current recipe with refrigerated storage and a stated shelf life.
- The ham is not a preservative hereNineteenth-century ham was generally saltier and often smoked, which may have given the mixture slightly more protection than modern ham would. Mild-cured or water-added supermarket ham contributes flavour and little else, and at a quarter-pound to the pound of chicken it should not be counted on for safety in either case.
- The doubled lineThe text repeats "one tea-spoonful of salt, four grains of cayenne" — almost certainly a duplication in printing or transcription rather than two separate additions. Read it as a single teaspoon of salt and four grains of cayenne per pound of meat.
- Grains and maceA grain is an apothecaries' weight of about 65 mg, so four grains of cayenne is only about an eighth of a teaspoon. Pounded mace is the ground aril of the nutmeg, still sold as ground mace; a quarter of a small nutmeg is somewhere around a quarter to a half teaspoon grated.
- Probable costTenpence in pre-decimal money, and by the recipe's own wording it covers the ham, butter and spice only, not the cold chicken. Cassell's gives a time and a probable cost for most of its entries.
History: Potting is often compared to the French terrine and confit: cooked meat pounded to a paste with butter and spice, packed into a shallow pot and sealed with a layer of clarified butter that kept air off the surface. Recipes for potted beef, tongue, salmon, shrimps, lampreys and game run through English cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, and by the time Cassell's Dictionary appeared the technique served both to use up cold roast meat and to fill the sandwiches of the tea table, which is what the closing line describes. Mace and nutmeg were common potting spices. The commercial version of the same idea became the potted meat and "sandwich paste" sold in glass jars, still on shelves today, though now made under conditions this recipe never imagined.