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Chicken Tamales

A steamed cornmeal dish with leftover chicken, enchilada sauce, eggs, olives, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Chicken Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare the enchilada sauce.

  2. Boil the leftover chicken and chop it finely.

  3. Stir the chicken into the sauce along with the eggs, olives, and raisins.

Assemble the tamales

  1. Spread a corn husk out and layer it with a thin cover of cornmeal mush.

  2. Add a layer of the chicken sauce mixture, then another layer of cornmeal mush.

  3. Cover with another corn husk and tie securely.

Steam

  1. Place in a steamer over boiling water to keep hot.

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. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  2. Olive + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,502 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + olivetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling so it holds together and sets lightly when heated.
Cornmeal mush
Forms the soft base layers that steam into a tender, moist tamale body.
Enchilada sauce
Adds moisture and savory, spiced flavor to the chicken filling.
Leftover chicken
Supplies the main savory filling, chopped fine so it spreads evenly between the layers.
Corn husks
Wrap and hold the layers together while the tamales steam.

The step that matters

Steam over boiling water. Steam is what cooks the cornmeal mush and sets the eggs. The water must stay boiling so the tamales cook through evenly, and the tied husks keep the steam and filling inside.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, egg, olive, corn):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, egg, olive, corn. 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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