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Ox-liver Puddings

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ox-liver Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the liver and grate it.

  2. Mix the grated liver, grated bread, and minced suet in equal quantities.

  3. Season the mixture with black pepper, Jamaica pepper, grated nutmeg, coarse sea salt, and rum.

  4. Half fill the skins with the mixture.

  5. Cook the puddings as you would other puddings.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, pepper, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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