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Chicken Pudding

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

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. Boil until tender.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then simmer for 10–15 minutes.

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

Assemble and bake

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

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

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

  4. Pour the batter over the chicken in the pudding dish.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (175 °C) for 1 hour.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, combine the remaining broth with 1 tablespoon of flour stirred into ⅓ cup of melted butter.

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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the pudding and provides its savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, helping it bake tender.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it bakes into a firm, cake-like pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the pudding and the gravy.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter over the chicken. The batter should be thick like griddle-cake batter. If it is too thin it runs through the chicken and bakes unevenly, while a batter that is too stiff will not spread to cover the meat.

“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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