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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of stewed chicken layered with a batter of milk, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stew the chicken pieces until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the gravy.

  3. Let the chicken cool on a flat dish.

  4. Season the chicken with butter, pepper, and salt.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, flour, melted butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and a little salt to make a batter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Layer the chicken at the bottom.

  3. Pour 1 cup of batter over the chicken and repeat layers until the dish is full, ensuring the batter forms the crust.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the thickened gravy in a gravy boat.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Chicken
Forms the savory filling that sits beneath the batter layers.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure, thickening the batter as it bakes into a set crust.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and helps the batter bake into a tender custard-like crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the batter rise and lighten.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to produce lift.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavor and a tender texture to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the chicken cool before layering. Hot chicken can melt or thin the batter before it sets, so cooling the pieces helps the batter bake into a distinct crust rather than mixing into the filling.

“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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