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Meat Pudding

A boiled pudding made from beef, suet, onions, parsley, salt, pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Meat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef steak into pieces about 2 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 1 inch thick.

  2. In a bowl, combine the beef, salt, black pepper, onion, and parsley.

Line and fill the basin

  1. Prepare the suet paste and roll it out to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Butter a basin and line it with the rolled‑out paste.

  3. Trim the edge of the paste with a floured knife.

  4. Fill the lined basin with the meat mixture and add stock or water.

  5. Cover with more paste and tie a cloth over the basin.

Boil

  1. Boil for several hours until cooked through.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meat and fat that flavour and moisten the filling as it cooks.
Suet paste
Forms the enclosing crust that holds the filling and steams it during boiling.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out flavour from the beef.

The step that matters

Boiling until cooked through. The filling is enclosed in thick paste, so heat reaches the centre slowly. Boiling gently for a long time lets the meat become tender and fully cooked, and the cloth keeps the pudding from taking on water.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley. 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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