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Snipe Pudding

A savory pudding made from snipe, onion, mushrooms, and claret, steamed in suet paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Snipe Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the snipes

  1. Divide the snipes in half and remove the gizzards, preserving the trail.

  2. Season the snipes with cayenne pepper and lemon juice, then set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion until light in color.

  2. Add flour, chopped mushrooms, parsley, garlic, nutmeg, and herbs to the onion.

  3. Moisten the mixture with claret and simmer for 10 minutes until boiling.

  4. Add the trail to the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble and steam

  1. Line a basin with the rolled suet paste.

  2. Place the snipes, sauce, and truffles in the basin.

  3. Cover the basin with more suet paste.

  4. Steam the basin for 1.5 hours before serving.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Snipes
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful when gently steamed.
Suet paste
Forms a rich, sealed crust that holds the filling and keeps it moist while steaming.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce, moistening the mixture as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the snipes rather than running off.
Onion
Builds a savoury, sweet base as it fries to light colour.
Truffles
Add an earthy, aromatic note to the filling.

The step that matters

Straining the sauce before assembling. Straining removes the onion, herbs and solids so the sauce is smooth and thin enough to fill the basin evenly without clumps or grit. Skipping it can leave a lumpy, uneven filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, flour, mushroom, parsley, clove, garlic):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, flour, mushroom, parsley, clove, garlic. 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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