Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Rabbit Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rabbit
Wash the rabbit in several waters.
Cut off the head and cut the rest of the rabbit into small pieces.
Season the rabbit pieces with pepper, salt, and mushroom powder.
Make the pudding
Make a suet paste by mixing the minced suet with the flour.
Combine the seasoned rabbit with the suet paste, adding a little flour and water as needed.
Wrap the mixture in a cloth and boil it for 2.5 hours.
Serve
Serve with gravy in a sauce-tureen, adding pickled pork if desired.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together832 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Mushroom + porktop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).
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Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together252 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
- Rabbit
- Forms the main meat filling that gives the pudding its savoury body.
- Beef or veal suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
- All-purpose flour
- Binds with the suet and water to form a paste that holds the filling together.
The step that matters
Wrapping and boiling the pudding. The mixture must be wrapped snugly in cloth so it holds its shape and does not let in too much water. Boiling at a steady simmer for the full 2.5 hours lets the flour paste set and the meat become tender.
“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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