Skip to main content
Main

Sage and Onion Pudding

A savory pudding made with suet, onions, ham or bacon, sage, salt, and cayenne pepper, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sage and Onion Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Make a good suet paste and roll it out on a well-floured board.

  2. Mince the onions finely and scatter them over the paste.

  3. Add the diced ham or bacon and finely minced sage leaves.

  4. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper.

Roll and boil

  1. Roll up the paste, fasten the ends, and place it in a floured cloth.

  2. Plunge it into boiling water and boil for three hours.

  3. Serve with gravy or onion sauce.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 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 paste
Forms the outer dough that encloses the filling and holds its shape while boiling.
Onions
Provide the main savoury bulk and sweetness as they soften in the rolled pudding.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour to the filling.
Sage
Adds a fragrant herbal aroma that complements the onion and meat.

The step that matters

Fasten the ends and keep the cloth floured. If the roll is not sealed well, or the cloth sticks, the pudding can leak or tear during the long boil. A floured cloth lets the suet crust release cleanly and keeps its shape while it steams and boils.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sage, 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.

You might also like

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