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Chicken Pudding

A baked chicken pudding made with a flour and butter batter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Parboil the chicken, seasoning with pepper, salt, and ½ cup of butter.

  2. Stew the chicken slowly for 30 minutes, then remove and let cool on a flat dish.

  3. Reserve the cooking water for gravy.

Make the batter

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer chicken in a baking dish, pouring enough batter over each layer to conceal the meat.

  2. Continue layering until the dish is full, ensuring the batter forms the crust.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard-like crust.
Flour
Provides the starch structure that thickens the batter and holds the crust together.
Milk
Supplies liquid that moistens the batter and helps it bake into a tender crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, flavor, and a tender texture in the crust.

The step that matters

Layering chicken and batter. Each layer needs enough batter to cover the meat, because exposed chicken can dry out and the batter must set around it to form a cohesive crust.

“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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