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Rabbit Pudding

A steamed rabbit pudding made with rabbit pieces, bacon rind, stock, and spices, wrapped in suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin, empty, and wash the rabbit, then cut it into 10-12 pieces.

  2. Make gravy by stewing the rabbit's head, liver, and bacon rind in stock or water, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Assemble

  1. Line a buttered basin with suet crust.

  2. Season each piece of rabbit with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then place them in the basin with bacon strips.

  3. Pour cooled stock over the rabbit pieces.

  4. Cover the basin, press the edges together, and tie it in a floured cloth wrung out of boiling water.

Cook

  1. Place it in fast-boiling water and boil for 3 hours until done.

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

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

  2. Rabbit + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle boil.
Bacon rind
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the gravy and the meat.
Stock or water
Supplies moisture that turns into gravy and keeps the meat from drying out.
Suet crust
Forms a rich, sturdy lining that holds the filling and cooks into a steamed pastry.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a fast boil for the full 3 hours. The pudding cooks by steaming in boiling water. If the water drops to a simmer, the heat is too low to cook the meat and suet crust through evenly, so the water should be kept boiling and topped up with boiling water as needed.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, 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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