Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Rabbit Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the rabbit in several waters and cut it into small pieces, removing the head.
Make a suet paste by mixing the minced suet with flour.
Season the rabbit pieces with pepper, salt, and mushroom powder.
Cook and serve
Combine the seasoned rabbit with a little flour and water in the paste.
Wrap the mixture in a cloth and boil it in water for 2.5 hours.
Serve with gravy in a sauce-tureen, adding pickled pork if desired.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together832 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Mushroom + porktop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).
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Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together252 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rabbit
- Forms the main meat filling, giving the pudding its substance and savory flavor.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
- All-purpose flour
- Combines with suet and water to form the paste that wraps and holds the filling.
The step that matters
Wrapping the mixture in a cloth. The cloth must be wrapped snugly and secured so the pudding holds its shape and does not let water in during the long boil. Loose wrapping can make the pudding soggy or cause it to fall apart.
“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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