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Liver Pudding

A savory pudding made from sheep's liver, suet, bread crumbs, herbs, spices, anchovy, and butter, boiled in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Liver Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the sheep's liver thinly.

  2. Mix the liver with suet, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, nutmeg, pepper, and anchovy.

  3. Add salt or anchovy liquor and butter; mix well.

Cook

  1. Fill the crust with the mixture and close it.

  2. Boil for three 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's liver
Forms the main body of the pudding and gives it its rich, meaty flavour.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread or biscuit crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture so it holds together when cut.
Sweet herbs
Add aroma that brightens the rich liver flavour.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth, rounding out the flavour of the liver.

The step that matters

Close the crust firmly before boiling. If the crust has gaps or weak seams, water enters during the long boil and dilutes the filling, making it soggy and loose instead of set and sliceable.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, bread, pepper, anchovy, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, pepper, anchovy, butter. 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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