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Chicken Pudding

A savory pudding made with chicken, beef suet paste, charissa or smoked veal, beef gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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. Prepare a beef suet paste and line a basin with it.

  2. Lightly fry the chicken pieces until golden.

Make the filling

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the fried chicken, charissa or smoked veal, and enough beef gravy to cover.

  2. Season with mushroom essence, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace; simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Fill the lined basin with the chicken mixture and pour some gravy over it.

Cover and serve

  1. Cover the pudding tightly with the paste, wetting the edges to seal.

  2. Reserve the remaining gravy to serve 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. Nutmeg + macetop 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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

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

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Forms the paste that encloses the filling and gives a rich, savoury crust.
Chicken
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers in gravy.
Beef gravy
Keeps the filling moist and carries the savoury flavour through the pudding.
Charissa or smoked veal
Adds a smoky, meaty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding. Wetting the paste edges and covering the basin tightly closes the pudding so steam and juices stay inside, keeping the filling moist rather than dry.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, beef, veal, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg. 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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