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White Hog Puddings

A pudding made from rice, milk, beef marrow or suet, currants, almonds, and spices, boiled in skins and served with butter or wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Hog Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in milk until tender.

  2. Chop the beef marrow or suet finely.

  3. Wash and dry the currants.

  4. Blanch the almonds.

  5. Beat the almonds in a mortar with a little rose water.

  6. Beat the eggs with salt and sugar.

  7. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, and cream to the egg mixture.

  8. Mix all ingredients together.

  9. Soak the skins in rose water.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill the skins three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Boil the filled skins for a few minutes.

  3. Prick the skins to prevent bursting.

  4. Return the skins to boiling until fully cooked.

  5. Cool the skins in straw.

  6. Keep the skins dry.

Serve

  1. Broil before serving with cold butter or wine sauce.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  5. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set when cooked.
Rice
Cooked in milk to give body and a soft, tender filling.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to add moisture and softness to the filling.
Beef marrow or suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Sweet almonds
Pounded into a paste that adds body and a rich, nutty flavour.
Currants
Add sweetness and small bursts of fruity flavour throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Prick the skins before returning them to the boil. Filled casings expand as the contents heat and can burst; pricking lets steam escape so the skins stay whole while the filling cooks through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, beef, almond, rose, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, beef, almond, rose, egg, sugar. 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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