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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken covered in a flour and egg batter, finished with butter and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and cut the chicken into small pieces.

  2. Simmer the chicken in a covered kettle until tender.

  3. Remove the chicken and place it in a baking dish, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, milk, and beaten eggs to create a batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the chicken, dredge with extra flour, and dot with butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden brown.

  2. Make gravy using the cooking water from the chicken.

  3. Serve the pudding with gravy.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + milktop 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).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a firm, custard-like structure as they bake.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body as it bakes.
Milk
Moistens the batter and adds richness and softness to the baked pudding.
Chicken
Provides the main filling, cooked tender before being baked into the batter.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the top brown to a golden color in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set through gentle, steady heat; if the oven is too hot, the batter can puff, crack, or turn rubbery before the center firms. Baking until just set keeps the texture tender.

“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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