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Sausage Pudding

A boiled pudding made with pork sausages, onion, sage, butter, flour, stock, salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sausage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Line a moderate-sized pudding basin with good suet crust.

  2. Fill it with the prepared sausages.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onion and sage leaves in butter until the onion turns yellow.

  2. Dredge the flour over the mixture.

  3. Pour in the stock.

  4. Stir the sauce over heat until it boils.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne.

  6. Let the sauce cool.

  7. Strain it over the sausages.

Cover and boil

  1. Cover the pudding with the pastry.

  2. Tie it in a pudding cloth.

  3. Plunge it into boiling water.

  4. Boil for three hours until done.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fresh pork sausages
Form the filling and supply the main savoury meat flavour.
Suet crust (in the method)
Forms the sealed pastry case that holds the filling during the long boil.
Butter
Carries the onion and sage flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that coats the sausages.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury depth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury aroma as it fries to yellow.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil in enough water for the full three hours. If the water drops too low or stops simmering, the pastry can turn heavy and the filling may cook unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, butter, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, butter, flour, 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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