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Partridge Pudding

A boiled pudding made with partridges, veal, stock, and seasonings, wrapped in suet paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Partridge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease and line a 1.5 pint pudding basin with suet paste.

  2. Place the veal cutlet pieces in the bottom of the basin.

  3. Layer the partridge joints on top of the veal.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, chopped shallot, and mushrooms.

  5. Pour in the brown stock.

Cook

  1. Wet the edge of the paste, cover with a top crust, and tie tightly with a cloth.

  2. Plunge into boiling water and boil gently for 2 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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long gentle boil.
Veal cutlet
Adds collagen and gelatin that enrich the meat and give body to the juices.
Brown stock
Supplies moisture and savoury depth that gently cooks the meat and forms the sauce.
Suet paste
Forms a sealed crust that traps steam and keeps the filling moist during boiling.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic sweetness that mellows as it cooks in the stock.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly and keep the water boiling gently. A loose cover lets water seep into the basin and dilute the juices, while a vigorous boil can break the crust and toughen the meat. Keeping the seal tight and the simmer gentle keeps the filling moist and tender.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, mushroom. 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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