Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Pigeon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Line a pudding basin with the suet or butter crust.
Fill it with the seasoned rump steak and halved pigeons.
Add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, butter, and gravy.
Cook
Cover the pudding with pastry and tie it in a floured cloth.
Plunge it into boiling water and boil for 2.5 hours until done.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rump steak
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
- Pigeons
- Supply the richly flavoured meat that forms the centre of the pudding.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
- Suet or butter crust
- Forms the pastry casing that holds the filling together while it steams.
- Gravy
- Adds moisture and savoury depth so the filling stays juicy.
The step that matters
Boiling the pudding. The pudding must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full time. If the water drops or stops boiling, the meat cooks unevenly and the pastry can turn soggy, so top up with boiling water as needed.
“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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