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Rabbit Pudding

A boiled pudding made with rabbit, bacon, suet, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and beef work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 252 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the rabbit with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Cut the bacon into strips.

  3. In a bowl, mix the beef suet, flour, coarse sea salt, and cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Grease a basin and roll out the paste, reserving a small piece for the top.

Assemble and boil

  1. Line the basin with the paste, then add the rabbit and bacon.

  2. Pour in the stock or water.

  3. Roll out the reserved paste to cover the top, wet the edges, and press to seal.

  4. Dip a cloth in boiling water, dust with flour, and tie it over the pudding.

  5. Place the pudding in boiling water and boil for 3.5 to 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Loosen the edges with a knife, turn out carefully, and serve.

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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long boil.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the paste moist and tender as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff paste that structures the pudding casing.
Streaky bacon
Contributes fat and savoury flavour that seasons the filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding. If the top paste is not wetted and pressed firmly to the edges, gaps can open during the long boil, letting water seep into the filling and loosening the casing.

“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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