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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken in a batter with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Boil until tender, then season with salt and pepper and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Remove the chicken from the broth and take out the large bones.

Make the pudding

  1. Place the chicken meat in a well-buttered pudding dish and season again if needed, then add a few bits of butter.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with milk, melted butter, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Add enough sifted flour to create a batter like griddle-cakes, then pour the batter over the chicken in the pudding dish.

  4. Bake for 1 hour in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Combine the remaining broth with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed into ⅓ cup melted butter.

  2. Bring to a boil, adding more water if necessary.

  3. Serve the pudding hot with the gravy.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the griddle-cake-like batter that structures the pudding around the chicken.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Moistens the batter and adds richness and softness to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the pudding and gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the batter over the chicken. The batter must be smooth and pourable, like griddle-cake batter, so it sets evenly around the chicken. Lumps from unsifted flour can leave dry or doughy spots.

“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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