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Meat Puddings

A savory pudding made with pigeons, bacon, steak, and aromatics, boiled for one and a half hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,326 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Meat Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pudding crust.

  2. Open the pigeons by the back, divide them into quarters, and remove the big bones.

  3. Flatten each piece and season with salt, pepper, and grated ginger.

  4. Make a stuffing with the liver.

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer a slice of bacon, the pigeons, and a slice of steak on the crust.

  2. Season with herbs, onions, leeks, or mushrooms.

  3. Add ½ cup of ale, wine, gravy, or water.

  4. Boil for one and a half hours 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. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, whose flesh becomes tender during the long moist cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the meat as it renders.
Steak
Adds beefy richness and chewy, meaty texture to the filling.
Stuffing (liver)
Adds depth and a rich, earthy flavour to the filling.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in the steam.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the liquid and keep the pudding boiling gently. The crust is cooked by steam and hot liquid, so the liquid must be present and the boil steady for the full time. If it runs dry or boils too hard, the crust can turn dense or the meat can toughen.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, liver, onion, mushroom, wine):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, liver, onion, mushroom, wine. 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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