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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken pieces mixed with an egg, milk, butter, flour batter, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Chicken Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the milk, melted butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a batter.

Cook the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces and place them in a saucepan with salt, water, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Boil the chicken until nearly done, then remove it from the pot.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the chicken pieces to the batter and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

  3. Serve the gravy separately.

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 batter into a custard-like structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds the chicken pieces together.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture of the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid that gives the batter its body and tender crumb.
Chickens
Supply the main meat and flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the chicken until nearly done. Chicken finishes cooking in the oven, so boiling it fully first would leave it dry and tough. Stopping just short of done keeps the meat 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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