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Veal Pudding

A steamed pudding made with veal, ham or bacon, suet paste, salt, pepper, and water, served with bone gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,264 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal into small, neat pieces and set aside the bones and trimmings.

  2. Cut the ham, bacon, or pork into narrow strips.

Assemble

  1. Line a well-greased basin with a thin layer of suet paste.

  2. Add the veal pieces and intersperse with strips of bacon, seasoning liberally with salt and pepper.

  3. Fill the basin nearly to the top with boiling water and cover with a thin lid of paste.

  4. Cover with greased paper and place the basin in a steamer or a saucepan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

Cook and serve

  1. Add boiling water as needed to maintain the level in the saucepan.

  2. Cook for 3 hours and serve with gravy made from the bones and trimmings.

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. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the pudding, becoming tender during long, gentle steaming.
Raw ham, bacon, or pickled pork
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour that seasons the meat as it cooks.
Suet paste
Forms a fat-rich crust that encloses the filling and holds in moisture during steaming.

The step that matters

Keeping the saucepan water level topped up. Steaming needs a steady supply of hot water. If the water boils dry, the basin overheats and the pudding can scorch or cook unevenly over the three hours.

“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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