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Chicken Pudding

A savory pudding made from boiled chicken, seasoned with mushroom powder, mace, nutmeg, and salt, combined with a butter and flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Fricassee the chickens and season with mushroom powder, mace, nutmeg, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Stew the giblets with a bit of meat to make gravy; reserve 2 tablespoons for the paste.

Cook and assemble

  1. Boil the chicken for 2 hours.

  2. Prepare a paste with flour and butter, and fill it with the seasoned chicken and gravy.

  3. Close the paste and boil for 2 hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the paste that encloses the chicken and holds its shape while boiling.
Butter
Adds fat to the paste, making it tender and rich.
Young chickens
Provide the main meat filling, which becomes tender through long gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Close the paste and boil for 2 hours. The paste must be sealed fully so the filling stays moist and the gravy does not leak out during the long boil. A poorly sealed paste lets liquid escape and can make the filling dry or watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, nutmeg, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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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