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Baked Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of stewed chicken layered with a flour‑milk batter and served with 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 and season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and allspice.

  2. In a pot, melt the butter and add enough water to cover the chickens.

  3. Stew the chickens gently until half cooked, then remove and let cool.

  4. Pour off the gravy and reserve it for serving.

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter by gradually stirring the flour into the milk, then adding the beaten eggs and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken and pour some batter over it.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with batter on top.

  3. Bake until brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Break an egg into the reserved gravy.

  2. Boil.

  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 meat and flavour that the pudding is built around.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when baked.
Flour
Gives the batter body and structure as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Eggs and flour in the batter set as they heat, so the pudding needs enough time in the oven to firm through. Stopping at surface colour alone can leave the centre soft and wet.

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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