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Delicate Chicken Pudding

A savory pudding made with chicken, bread, milk, egg, salt, and nutmeg, boiled in a tea cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Delicate Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Pound the white meat of the chicken in a mortar and pass it through a fine sieve.

Make the bread mixture

  1. Boil the piece of French bread in the milk until soft.

  2. Add the egg, salt, and nutmeg to the bread mixture and mix well.

Combine and cook

  1. Combine the chicken mixture with the bread mixture.

  2. Place the mixture in a tea cup or small basin and tie it down tightly with a cloth.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes if using a large tea cup.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White meat of chicken
Provides the main protein, which sets into a soft, tender body when cooked.
French bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and body that help the pudding hold together.
Milk
Softens the bread and keeps the mixture moist during cooking.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a firm but tender pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth tightly. A tight seal keeps water out of the cup while it boils and holds the mixture's shape. Loose covering lets water in, which makes the pudding watery and dilutes its flavor.

“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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