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Mutton Steak Pudding

A boiled pudding of mutton, potatoes, onions, celery, and parsley in a suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the mutton pieces with salt and pepper, then roll them in flour.

  2. Line a small pudding basin with the suet crust.

Fill the pudding

  1. Layer the bottom with potato slices, then add a layer of seasoned meat.

  2. Sprinkle chopped parsley, minced onion, celery, salt, black pepper, and cayenne over the meat.

  3. Fill the basin, then pour in the weak stock.

Cook

  1. Cover the pudding with the crust, tie it in a cloth dipped in hot water and dusted with flour.

  2. Boil the pudding steadily for three 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the pudding is built around.
Suet crust
Forms the enclosing pastry that holds the filling together while it cooks.
Potatoes
Add starchy body and soak up some of the cooking liquid as the pudding steams.
Weak stock
Supplies moisture that cooks the meat and potatoes into a tender, savoury filling.
Flour
Coats the meat, helping it brown slightly and thicken the juices around it.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding steadily for three hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady simmer and the cloth must stay wrapped snugly. A gentle, consistent heat cooks the tough mutton until tender without drying the crust or letting water seep into the filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, flour, potato, parsley, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, flour, potato, parsley, celery. 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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