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Roman Pudding

A savory pudding made with boiled macaroni, chopped meats, Parmesan, spices, eggs, and cream, baked in a buttered basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Roman Pudding

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roman Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a basin and line it with boiled macaroni, shaped like a beehive.

  2. Finely chop veal, ham, tongue, chicken, or cold game.

Make and fill

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped meats with Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, lemon peel, cayenne, eggs, and cream.

  2. Fill the lined basin with the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 30 minutes, then glaze and serve with brown gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped meats and cream together so the pudding holds its shape when set.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the meat mixture tender as it cooks.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and depth to the meat filling.
Boiled macaroni
Forms the outer shell that gives the pudding its beehive shape.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes. Boiling must be gentle enough to set the egg and cream mixture evenly without making it tough or cracking the shape. Eggs coagulate as they heat, so overheating leads to a rubbery, curdled texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, ham, chicken, parmesan cheese, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, ham, chicken, parmesan cheese, pepper, lemon. 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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