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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken layered with a flour‑milk batter and served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens and stew until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the gravy and season with butter, pepper, and salt.

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter by mixing milk, flour, melted butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer chicken at the bottom.

  2. Pour a cup of batter over the chicken and repeat until the dish is full.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  4. Serve the thickened gravy in a gravy boat.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that sets as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter a moist, tender body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lighten the texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the batter and contributes richness and browning.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the chicken in layers. The batter must be poured gently so it settles around the chicken without deflating the leavening. Filling the dish too quickly can cause uneven rising and a dense, gummy layer.

“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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