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Mutton Pudding

A savory pudding made from mutton, suet, flour, eggs, milk, raisins, and currants, boiled in a suet-lined basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Fill the basin

  1. Season the mutton slices with salt and pepper.

  2. Line a basin with suet-crust and place the mutton inside.

  3. Add shredded onion, shallot, and ketchup.

  4. Close the basin tightly and tie it in a cloth.

Boil

  1. Boil for sufficient time.

  2. For the pudding, mix flour, suet, eggs, milk, raisins, and currants well.

  3. Boil the pudding for 30 minutes with the pot cover on.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the savoury meat filling, which becomes tender through long, moist boiling.
Flour
Forms the body of the pudding batter and gives it structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust and pudding rich and tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as it cooks, holding the pudding together.
Milk
Moistens the batter so the flour hydrates and the pudding stays soft.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Close the basin tightly and tie it in a cloth. A tight seal keeps boiling water out of the basin, so the pudding stays moist and does not turn soggy or waterlogged.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, shallot, ketchup, flour, egg, milk. 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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