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Cold Meat Pudding

A savory pudding made with cold meat, flour, herbs, and milk, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Meat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, chopped parsley, chopped onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, beaten egg, and milk until smooth.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and add it to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish well and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Turn out and serve with gravy over or around it.

Alternative: steam

  1. Alternatively, pour the mixture into a buttered bowl, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out and serve with brown sauce.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Cold meat
Provides the main bulk and savoury flavour of the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg mixture so the pudding holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that keeps the pudding moist as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Baking or steaming until just set. Egg proteins set with heat, so overcooking can make the pudding dry and rubbery, while undercooking leaves it loose in the centre.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, parsley, milk, pepper, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, parsley, milk, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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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