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Partridge Pudding

A steamed pudding made with partridges, veal, mushrooms, shallot, and brown stock, wrapped in suet paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Partridge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease and line a 1.5‑pint pudding basin with suet paste.

  2. Place the veal cutlet pieces in the bottom of the basin.

  3. Layer the partridge joints on top of the veal.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, chopped shallot, and mushrooms.

  5. Pour in the brown stock.

Cover and cook

  1. Wet the edge of the paste, cover with a top crust, and tie tightly with a cloth.

  2. Plunge the basin into boiling water and boil gently for 2 hours.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 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

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during long gentle cooking.
Veal cutlet
Adds meat juices and body, enriching the gravy as it cooks in the basin.
Brown stock
Supplies liquid that steams the meat and forms the savoury gravy.
Suet paste
Forms a sealed crust that holds moisture in and keeps the filling enclosed while steaming.
Shallot
Adds mild aromatic sweetness that deepens the flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Cover and seal the basin. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the basin. If the paste edge is not wetted and pressed firmly, or the cloth is loose, liquid can escape and the filling may dry out or cook unevenly during the long boil.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, mushroom. 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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