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Mutton Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with mutton, suet, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Make a paste with veal suet, flour, and milk.

  2. Roll out the paste and line a basin with it.

Fill and seal

  1. Layer in the mutton steaks, veal fat, pepper, salt, and onion alternately until the basin is full.

  2. Cover with the remaining paste and pinch the edges to seal.

  3. Cover the basin tightly with a cloth.

Cook

  1. 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Veal suet
Adds fat to the paste, making it tender and rich.
Mutton steaks
Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavorful during long cooking.
Veal fat
Adds moisture and richness to the filling as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cover the basin tightly with a cloth. A tight cover traps steam so the pudding cooks through in moist heat. If steam escapes or the cloth is loose, water can enter the basin and the pudding can turn soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, milk, mutton, pepper. 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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