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Meat Roll Puddings

A boiled pudding made by rolling minced beef and kidney in suet pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Roll Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roll

  1. Make a plain suet pastry and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  2. Combine the minced beef, kidney, salt, black pepper, nutmeg, and minced onion or mushrooms.

  3. Spread the meat mixture over the pastry and roll it up tightly.

Boil

  1. Tie the roll in a cloth and boil for 2½ to 3 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet pastry
Forms the wrapper, and its fat makes the crust rich and tender.
Beef
Provides the main savoury flavour and bulk, and firms as it cooks.
Kidney
Adds a deep, rich flavour and a firmer, chewier texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Roll the pastry up tightly. A tight roll leaves no air gaps, so the filling stays in place and cooks evenly as the pastry steams. A loose roll can unroll or let water seep into the filling, making it soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion. 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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