Name: Chicken Pudding
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, cut up; 6 eggs; 1 quart sweet milk; Salt to taste; Flour, enough to make a thin batter; Lard for greasing; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 heaping tablespoon butter

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Parboil the chicken pieces until tender.
Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the sweet milk, salt, and enough flour to create a thin batter.
Grease a pan with lard and place the chicken in it.
Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and the butter.

Bake

Pour the batter over the chicken.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,389 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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: Bind the batter and set into a custard-like pudding when baked.
Flour: Thickens the milk and egg mixture into a batter that holds the chicken together.
Sweet milk: Adds moisture and richness, and helps the batter set softly as it bakes.
Chicken: Provides the main meat, cooked through in the batter during baking.

“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.