Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Pudding

A steamed rabbit pudding made with rabbit, bacon, herbs, onion, peppercorns, and suet crust, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the rabbit.

  2. Cut the rabbit into small pieces.

  3. Trim the bacon into dice.

Make the gravy

  1. Place the rabbit head and neck in a pot with cold water, herbs, onion, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Boil gently and skim as needed.

  3. When reduced to half a pint, strain the liquid.

  4. Thicken the liquid with browned flour.

  5. Season to taste.

Assemble and cook

  1. Line a basin with the suet crust.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces to the basin.

  3. Mix in the bacon and parsley.

  4. Season each layer with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour part of the gravy into the basin, reserving the rest for serving.

  6. Cover the basin, secure the edges.

  7. Steam for 3 to 3½ hours or boil.

  8. For an old rabbit, simmer the pieces in gravy for an hour before making the pudding.

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 + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that helps keep the lean meat moist.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body and a deeper colour.
Suet crust
Forms a rich, tender casing that holds the filling as it steams.
Onion
Adds savoury depth to the liquid used to make the gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the basin and secure the edges. A tight seal keeps steam and water out of the basin, so the filling cooks in its own juices and the suet crust stays light and cooked through.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, onion, flour, mushroom, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, onion, flour, mushroom, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes