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Chicken Pudding

A baked dish of chicken pieces in a batter of eggs, milk, flour, and butter, served with a butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. Place the chicken pieces in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Boil until tender, then season with salt and pepper and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Remove the chicken from the broth and take out the large bones.

  4. Put the chicken in a well-buttered pudding dish and season again if needed, adding a few bits of butter.

Make the batter and bake

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with milk, melted butter, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough sifted flour to create a batter like griddle cakes.

  3. Pour the batter over the chicken in the pudding dish.

  4. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with ⅓ cup of melted butter and add to the remaining broth.

  2. Let it boil, adding more water if necessary, and serve hot with the pudding.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the pudding and supplies flavour through the broth.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the batter structure and a custard-like firmness.
Flour
Forms the batter's body and thickens the gravy.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes lighter.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the batter and gravy.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the chicken and bake. The batter must be thin enough to pour yet thick enough to set. Too much flour makes it heavy, and the eggs need steady oven heat to set evenly without curdling or drying out.

“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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