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Preserve

Chicken Pudding

A savory pudding made from young chickens, seasoned with mushroom powder, mace, nutmeg, and salt, and cooked with a chicken gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fricassee the chickens and season them with mushroom powder, mace, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Stew the giblets with a bit of meat to make gravy.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of the gravy to the chicken mixture.

  4. Use the remaining gravy to fill or place under the pudding.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provide the main body of the filling, becoming tender and juicy when fricasseed.
Giblets
Add concentrated meaty flavour when stewed into the gravy.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness to the chicken filling.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the chicken.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the chicken.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, nutmeg, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, nutmeg, meat. 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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