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A Meat Pudding

A boiled meat pudding made with suet crust, fresh meat, onion, thyme, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Meat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Line a good-sized basin with a suet or dripping crust.

  2. Fill the hollow with small slices of fresh meat, seasoned with chopped onion, thyme, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Cover the meat with the overhanging flaps of the crust.

Boil

  1. Tie the pudding in a cloth and boil it in a saucepan with plenty of boiling water for at least three hours.

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. 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. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet or dripping crust
Forms a rich, pastry-like case that encloses the filling and holds it together while it cooks.
Small slices of fresh meat
Forms the main filling, which cooks through in the steam and releases juices that moisten the pudding.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens within the filling.
Thyme
Adds a herbal aroma that carries through the meat during long cooking.

The step that matters

Keep the pudding fully submerged while boiling. A suet crust needs steady, prolonged heat to cook through and become tender. If the pudding is not covered by boiling water, the exposed part dries and cooks unevenly, so the water should stay at a steady boil throughout.

Swap the onion

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

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

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