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Onion Pudding

A baked dish of onions, flour, breadcrumbs, butter, and sage, steamed in a paste-lined basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Onion Pudding

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Onion Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Dice the peeled onions and place them in a pie dish with breadcrumbs, butter, sage, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the dish and bake gently for 1 hour.

Make the paste and assemble

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour and breadcrumbs, then add baking powder and salt.

  2. Add enough water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Line a basin with the paste, add the cooled onion mixture, and cover with more paste.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the basin with 2-3 layers of greased paper and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve in the basin with brown sauce on the side.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff paste that encloses the onions and holds the pudding's shape.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the paste and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the paste rises and turns lighter.
Onions
Provide the main filling, softening and becoming sweet during the gentle baking.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and butter in the filling and add body to the paste.

The step that matters

Baking the onions gently. Baking at a low 300°F for an hour softens the onions and draws out their sweetness without browning or drying them. Cooling the mixture before it goes into the paste keeps the dough from becoming soggy or undercooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sage, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sage, pepper. 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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