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Chicken Pudding

A savory pudding made with stewed chicken, corn, sweet milk, eggs, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up and stew the chicken in minimal water until cooked.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and place it in a 3-quart pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated corn with the sweet milk and beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the corn mixture over the chicken.

  3. Dredge the top thickly with flour and dot with butter.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

Chicken
Provides the main body and savory base of the pudding.
Grated corn
Adds sweetness, moisture and body to the custard layer.
Sweet milk
Moistens the corn mixture and keeps the custard tender.
Eggs
Bind the corn and milk so the custard sets when baked.
Flour
Forms a dry crust on top that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown evenly.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The eggs set as they heat, so pulling the pudding too late can leave it dry and tough, while pulling it too early can leave the custard loose in the middle.

“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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