Skip to main content
Main

Partridge Pudding

A savory pudding made with partridges, prime steak, and gravy, cooked in a suet or butter crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Partridge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Pluck the partridges.

  2. Draw the partridges.

  3. Singe the partridges.

  4. If unsure of tenderness, skin them.

  5. Cut the partridges into neat joints.

  6. Fry the joints briefly in clarified butter if desired.

  7. Cut the steak into strips.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Line a pudding basin with a suet or butter crust, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place steak at the bottom of the basin.

  3. Place steak at the top of the basin.

  4. Place partridge joints in the middle of the basin.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and a dusting of Cayenne.

  6. Add mushrooms or truffles if using.

  7. Pour in 1½ cups of good gravy made from the trimmings of the birds and steak.

  8. Add small forcemeat balls if preferred.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover and boil for 3 to 3½ hours or steam for 4 hours.

  2. After cooking, cut a hole in the top.

  3. Add more gravy.

  4. Wine can be added if desired.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Partridges
Provide the main lean meat that becomes tender during long gentle cooking.
Prime steak
Adds rich beefy flavour and meaty body to the gravy and filling.
Suet or butter crust
Forms the enclosing pastry that holds the filling and steams in the cooking liquid.
Good gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth so the filling stays juicy during long cooking.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for the full time. Partridge is lean and the steak is tough, so long, gentle cooking in moist heat is needed to break down connective tissue. Cooking too briefly leaves the meat chewy, while a hard boil can toughen it and dry the surrounding crust.

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes