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Virginia Chicken Pudding

A baked chicken pudding made with eggs, milk, butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Virginia Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add the milk, drawn butter, pepper, and salt to the eggs.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

Prepare and cook the chicken

  1. Clean the chickens and cut off the legs and wings.

  2. Place the chickens in a saucepan with salt, water, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Boil the chickens until nearly done.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove the chickens and place them in the batter in a deep dish.

  2. Bake until cooked through.

  3. Serve with white gravy sauce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the batter into a structure that holds the chicken.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it bakes into a set, sliceable pudding.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard texture.
Drawn butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the batter.
Young chickens
Provide the main meat, which is partly cooked before being baked in the batter.

The step that matters

Boil the chickens until nearly done. Chicken finishes cooking in the oven, so boiling it fully will dry out the meat. Stopping short keeps it moist while the batter sets around it.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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