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Mutton Pudding

A steamed pudding made with mutton cutlets, potatoes, onions, herbs, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a 2-quart pudding basin with beef suet paste.

  2. Fill the basin with mutton cutlets or leg steaks, seasoning each layer with pepper, salt, parsley, thyme, and chopped onion.

  3. Add slices of potatoes between each layer of meat.

Cover and cook

  1. Wet the edges of the paste around the top of the basin and cover with a piece of paste rolled to size. Seal the edges by pressing with your thumb and twist to create a corded appearance.

  2. Steam or boil the pudding for about three hours.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn it out onto a platter and serve with rich 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet paste
Forms the sealed crust that encloses the filling and holds in steam while cooking.
Mutton cutlets or leg steaks
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during long, moist cooking.
Slices of potatoes
Layered between the meat to add starch and body, soaking up juices as the pudding cooks.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma that spread through the meat and potatoes as they cook.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the paste seal is not pressed firmly, steam and juices can escape or leak during the long cooking, leaving the filling dry or the pudding waterlogged.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, pepper, parsley, thyme, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, pepper, parsley, thyme, potato. 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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