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Savoury Roll Pudding

A boiled roll pudding made with flour, suet, and minced beef, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoury Roll Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, shredded suet, salt, and cold water to form a paste.

  2. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick and longer in one direction.

Fill and roll

  1. Spread minced beef steak over the paste, season with salt, pepper, and optional onion.

  2. Roll the paste tightly around the filling, sealing the edges with water.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding in a floured cloth and place it in a saucepan with boiling water to cover.

  2. Boil gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with gravy.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Forms the paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry rich and tender as it cooks.
Beef steak
Provides the savory meat filling that cooks through inside the roll.

The step that matters

Sealing the roll. If the edges are not sealed well with water, the filling can leak into the boiling water and the pudding can come apart. A tight roll also keeps the filling moist and evenly cooked.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, 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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