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Baked Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of stewed chicken layered with a flour and milk batter, served with reserved gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens.

  2. Season the chickens with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and allspice.

  3. Melt the butter in a pot.

  4. Add enough water to cover the chickens.

  5. Stew the chickens gently until half cooked.

  6. Remove the chickens and let them cool.

  7. Pour off the gravy.

  8. Reserve the gravy for serving.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the milk gradually.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken in a deep dish.

  2. Pour some batter over the chicken.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  4. Bake until brown.

Serve

  1. Break an egg into the reserved gravy.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Serve in a sauce tureen 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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of the pudding and the meat served with it.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that sets around the chicken as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when baked.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the chicken brown lightly in the pot.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking too briefly leaves the egg batter wet and unset, while overbaking dries it out. Look for a set, golden top rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, egg. 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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