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Savoury Rusk Pudding

A steamed pudding made from rusks soaked in broth, suet, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Savoury Rusk Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the rusks into a basin.

  2. Pour the boiling beef tea or broth over the rusks.

  3. Cover with a saucer and let soak for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Mince the suet.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the minced suet with the soaked rusks.

  2. Season the mixture.

  3. Beat in the eggs.

  4. Butter a basin and pour in the mixture.

  5. Steam for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. 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. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rusks
Soak up the broth to form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Beef tea or broth
Softens the rusks and adds savory flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs. Eggs should be fully mixed into the cooled, soaked rusk mixture so they distribute evenly. If the mixture is too hot, the eggs can scramble, leaving streaks and a grainy texture instead of a smooth, set pudding.

“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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