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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken, corn, eggs, and milk, topped with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a saucepan with a little water, season with salt and pepper, and boil until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken and place it in a 3-quart pudding dish.

Make the corn custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated corn, beaten eggs, and sweet milk. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour the corn mixture over the chicken, dredge the top thickly with flour, and dot with butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked through.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Pepper + corntop 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 protein and savory body of the pudding.
Green corn
Gives the pudding its sweet corn flavor and tender, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the corn and milk and set during baking to give the pudding structure.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the custard become smooth and tender.
Flour
Forms a dry crust on top that browns during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. Eggs set as they heat; underbaking leaves the custard loose and watery, while overbaking can make it dry and curdled. Check that the center is set before removing it from the oven.

“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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