Skip to main content
Main

Liver Puddings

Liver puddings made by mixing liver, suet, onions, spices, filling entrails, boiling, broiling, and serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and thyme 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 ↓

Liver Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash and clean the entrails thoroughly.

  2. Boil the liver until it can be grated or pounded.

  3. Mix the grated liver with minced suet, chopped onions, black pepper, salt, and thyme.

Fill and cook

  1. Half-fill the entrails with the mixture, cut them into lengths, and fasten the ends.

  2. Boil the filled entrails briefly and prick them to prevent bursting.

  3. Let them cool, then broil and serve.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Liver + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main body and rich flavour of the filling.
Minced suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Pricking the filled entrails after boiling. Steam expands inside the sealed casing as it heats. Pricking lets it escape, which prevents the casings from bursting and the filling from leaking out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pepper, thyme):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, thyme. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes