Why it works: Beef and oyster work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 798 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Meat Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crust
Prepare a suet crust by mixing flour, suet, salt, and enough water to form a stiff paste.
Roll out the paste on a floured board.
Assemble the pudding
Line a greased basin with some of the paste.
Fill the basin with prepared beef.
Wrap an oyster in each slice of meat.
Add enough water to come halfway up the basin.
Roll out the remaining paste.
Cover the pudding, wetting the edges to seal.
Cover the pudding with a cloth dipped in hot water and sprinkled with flour.
Tie securely.
Boil
Boil for about 2 hours.
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.
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Beef + oystertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together798 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,582 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
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Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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 stiff paste that becomes the crust, giving structure to hold the filling.
- Suet
- Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender as it cooks.
- Beef
- Forms the main filling, which cooks slowly in the steam inside the pudding.
- Oysters
- Adds a briny, savoury flavour to the meat filling.
The step that matters
Sealing the pudding. If the edges are not wetted and pressed firmly, steam and water can enter or the filling can leak during the long boil. A well-sealed crust keeps the contents moist and cooking evenly.
“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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