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Fowl, with Ham, Potted
Chop together six ounces of cooked ham and the meat of a hot roast chicken; pound these in a mortar, with four ounces of butter. Boil down the bones of the chicken with the skin and the gravy from the roasting, season with salt, pepper, mace, and cayenne; reduce the mixture to a glaze, and add it to the pounded meat. Press the fowl and ham into shallow earthen pots, cover with clarified butter, and store in a cool place.
This is a Victorian preserving method rather than a dish to be eaten straight away, and that is where it fails. The notes below explain the terms and the hazard.
- Why the butter seal is the problemCooked meat packed into a pot and sealed under a layer of clarified butter is an oxygen-free, low-acid, moist environment held at ambient temperature. Those are the exact conditions in which Clostridium botulinum spores, which survive roasting and pounding, can germinate and produce toxin. The butter is not a preservative; it is a lid.
- "A cool place" is not a temperatureA Victorian larder or cellar might sit anywhere from 45F to 60F depending on the season. Botulinum growth is only reliably halted below about 38F, and the recipe gives no time limit, no salt or nitrite quantity, and no heat process. There is nothing here to modernise into safety; use a current potted-meat recipe that specifies refrigeration and a short keeping time.
- Reheating does not fix itReheating cannot be relied on to fix it -- the spores are heat-resistant, and although the toxin itself is broken down by thorough boiling, it is odourless and tasteless, so spoiled potted meat of this kind gives no warning at the table.
- GlazeThe reduced stock called for here is a Victorian meat glaze: bones, skin and roasting-pan gravy simmered down until syrupy and setting firm when cold. It is a flavour concentrate, added for richness and body, and contributes nothing to keeping quality.
- MaceThe lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, sold ground or in blades. It is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg, and was a standard seasoning in English potted meats and fish alongside cayenne.
- Mortar workThe pounding is doing what a food processor does now: breaking the fibres so the meat and butter form a smooth paste rather than a mince. The recipe directs that the chicken be used hot from the roast, which blends with the butter more easily than cold meat.
- Shallow earthen potsSmall earthenware pots, shallow so that the butter covers a broad surface. Nothing about the vessel affects the safety question.
Potting was one of the standard English methods of carrying cooked meat, game and fish through a season before mechanical refrigeration: the flesh was pounded with butter, packed tight to exclude air, and sealed under a layer of clarified butter that set hard. Recipes of this shape appear in English household books from the seventeenth century onward, and potted beef, potted hare and potted shrimps were still sold commercially well into the twentieth. The version here, pairing a roast fowl with cooked ham, is a thrifty second-day dish as much as a preserve, and the instruction to boil down the carcass, skin and pan gravy into a glaze shows the Victorian kitchen's habit of extracting the last value from a bird. Cassell's, compiled as an alphabetical dictionary for middle-class households, presents it without comment.