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Veal Pudding

A steamed pudding made with veal, bacon, thyme, and a suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a clean frying pan over low heat.

  2. Add the veal, bacon, thyme, pepper, and salt to the pan and cook for about 10 minutes.

  3. Add warm water to the pan and bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Let it cool.

Assemble and steam

  1. Line a pudding dish with suet crust.

  2. Layer the veal and bacon in the dish and pour the gravy over the layers.

  3. Roll out a piece of paste for the lid, place it on top of the dish, and seal the lid with your thumb.

  4. Tie the basin in a pudding cloth.

  5. Place the basin in a saucepan of boiling water and keep boiling until done, about 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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + thymetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,758 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Veal
Provides the main meat and body of the filling as it cooks down into tender pieces.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the meat brown lightly and carry flavour.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the veal and the gravy.
Suet for crust
Forms a tender, sturdy pastry casing that holds the filling during steaming.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before assembling. Boiling the mixture and then cooling it lets the juices thicken into a gravy and keeps hot liquid from softening the suet crust before it is steamed.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Thymethe original

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