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Partridge Pudding

A boiled pudding made from partridges, mushrooms, shallots, parsley, and suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Partridge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the partridges into convenient-sized pieces and trim them neatly, skinning each piece.

  2. Butter a pudding basin and line it with the suet crust.

Fill and boil

  1. Place the pieces of partridge in the basin, adding mushrooms, shallots, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten with a small amount of water and cover with a flat piece of crust.

  3. Tie a floured cloth over the pudding and place it in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Boil for three hours, adding more boiling water as needed to keep the pudding covered.

Serve

  1. When cooked, turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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 cooks through gently inside the steamed pudding.
Suet crust
Forms the enclosing pastry that holds the filling and keeps it moist during steaming.
Shallots
Add a mild, savoury onion flavour that deepens the filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Keeping the pudding covered in boiling water. If the water level drops and the pudding is exposed, the crust dries and hardens. Topping up with boiling water keeps the steam and heat even during the long boil.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, parsley, 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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