Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Tamales

A dish of cornmeal and ground chicken wrapped in corn husks and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix the chicken, cornmeal, beaten egg, salt, and cayenne pepper together.

  2. Prepare large corn shucks, preferably dry and free from splits.

Shape and tie

  1. Place about 1 tablespoon of the chicken mixture on each shuck and shape it into a 2.5 to 3-inch long form.

  2. Fold the lengthwise edges of the shucks over the mixture and turn down the ends to form a secure package.

  3. Tie the tamales in bunches of 6 with string around both ends.

Cook

  1. Place the tamales in a stew kettle, add boiling water, white pepper, butter, cayenne, and paprika.

  2. Boil slowly for 1 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.

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

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

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the filling and absorbs moisture as the tamales cook.
Egg
Binds the chicken and cornmeal so the filling holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, softening the filling.
Chicken
Provides the main savory filling that is wrapped and cooked inside the shucks.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes