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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of stewed chicken layered with a flour‑milk batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the chicken pieces with pepper, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. In a pot, melt the butter and add enough water to cover the chicken.

  3. Add the chicken and stew gently until half cooked.

  4. Remove the chicken and let it cool.

  5. Pour off the gravy and set it aside.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the milk gradually.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and a pinch of salt to the batter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer some chicken in a deep dish.

  2. Pour over some batter.

  3. Add more chicken and batter, repeating until the dish is full.

  4. Ensure the top layer is batter.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until brown.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Beat an egg into the reserved gravy.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  3. Serve in a sauceboat with the pudding.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chickens
Provide the meat that is partly stewed, then baked into the pudding.
Flour
Mixes with milk and eggs to form a batter that sets as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and enriches the batter, giving a soft, custard-like texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving the pudding structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stewing liquid, carrying flavour into the chicken.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until brown. Egg-and-flour batter sets as proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling it too early leaves it wet and loose, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, egg. 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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