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Rabbit Pudding

A steamed rabbit and pickled pork pudding with suet crust, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit, cut it into neat joints, and set aside the head, neck, liver, and kidneys for gravy.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper, then coat the rabbit pieces with this mixture.

Assemble and steam

  1. Line a basin with pastry and layer the rabbit and diced pork inside.

  2. Fill the basin with cold water, cover with pastry, and then with 2 or 3 layers of greased paper.

  3. Steam for at least 2½ hours.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and serve the gravy made from the reserved rabbit parts separately.

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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the pudding and provides the meat for the filling.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the meat as it steams.
Flour
Lightly coats the rabbit pieces, helping to thicken the juices around them.
Suet crust
Encloses the filling and holds its moisture during the long steam.

The step that matters

Keep the water out of the basin during assembly. The basin is filled with cold water and sealed under pastry and greased paper. If the covering is loose or the paper is not greased, steam and water can soften or tear the crust, and the long steam must be kept gentle and continuous so the meat cooks through without drying.

“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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