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Veal Pudding

A steamed pudding made with veal, ham, and suet crust, seasoned with pepper, salt, and mace, and cooked in a pudding basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,264 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the pudding

  1. Line a shallow pudding basin with suet crust rolled to ½ inch thick, leaving 1 inch over the edge.

  2. Fill the dish with layers of veal and ham, sprinkling each layer with pepper, salt, and pounded mace.

  3. Pour ½ cup of veal gravy over the meat.

  4. Cover with pastry, moisten the edge, and press the two layers together.

  5. Wring out a pudding cloth from boiling water, dust it with flour, and tie the basin loosely in it.

Boil and serve

  1. Plunge the pudding into fast-boiling water and boil for 2 to 2½ hours.

  2. Let it stand for a few minutes, then turn it onto a dish and serve very hot.

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. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main filling, becoming tender during the long boil.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the layered meat filling.
Suet
Makes a rich, sturdy crust that holds its shape during boiling.
Veal gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the water fast-boiling when the pudding goes in. Dropping the pudding into water that is not at a full boil slows the heat reaching the meat and crust, which can leave the pastry soggy and the filling undercooked. Keeping the water steadily boiling helps the crust set and the meat cook through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, flour. 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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