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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken in a batter of eggs, milk, flour, and butter, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

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.

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.

  3. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, then remove the chicken and discard the bones.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with milk, melted butter, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough sifted flour to create a batter similar to griddle-cakes.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Pour the batter over the chicken in the dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  4. For gravy, use the remaining broth, adding flour stirred into melted butter, and boil, adding water if necessary.

  5. Serve the gravy hot 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. 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 set into a custard-like structure as the pudding bakes.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it holds together around the chicken.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Milk
Thins the egg batter and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and keeps the dish moist as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter over the chicken. The batter should be thick enough to hold together like griddle-cake batter, not runny. If it is too thin it will sink and separate rather than forming a set pudding around the chicken.

“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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