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Meat Puddings

A savory dish of birds, bacon, steak, and herbs boiled with ale or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,326 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Meat Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Open the birds by the back and remove the insides.

  2. Divide each bird into quarters and extract the big bones, leaving only the flesh.

  3. Flatten each piece and season with salt, pepper, and grated ginger.

  4. Prepare stuffing with the liver.

Layer and boil

  1. Layer a slice of bacon on the crust, followed by the birds, then a slice of steak.

  2. Season with aromatic herbs, onions, leeks, or mushrooms.

  3. Add ½ cup of ale, wine, gravy, or water.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve.

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. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Pigeons or small birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long moist cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the meat as it cooks.
Steak
Adds richer beef flavour and dense meaty texture to the pudding.
Leeks
Contribute mild sweetness and aroma to the filling as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savoury flavour to the filling.
Chopped onions
Add sweetness and aroma that deepen the flavour of the cooking liquid.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, liver, onion, mushroom, wine):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, liver, onion, mushroom, wine. 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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