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Veal Pudding

A steamed pudding made with veal, bacon, thyme, and a suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a clean frying pan over low heat.

  2. Add the veal, bacon, thyme, pepper, and salt to the pan.

  3. Cook the mixture for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add warm water to the pan.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Line a pudding dish with the suet crust.

  2. Layer the veal and bacon in the dish.

  3. Pour the gravy over the layered ingredients.

  4. Roll out a piece of dough for the lid.

  5. Place the dough lid on top and seal it with your thumb.

  6. Tie the dish in a pudding cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the wrapped dish in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Boil continuously for about 1 hour until done.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Butter + thymetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,758 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat body, becoming tender and savoury as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps brown the meat in the pan.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the meat and gravy as it renders.
Suet crust
Forms the sturdy pastry casing that holds the filling and gravy during steaming.

The step that matters

Boil continuously for about 1 hour. The pudding must stay at a steady boil so the suet crust cooks through and the filling becomes tender. If the water drops too low or stops boiling, the crust turns heavy and the meat cooks unevenly.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, butter, 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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