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Mutton Pudding

A boiled pudding made with mutton, onion, parsley, and suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Grease the pudding basin and line it with light suet or dripping crust.

  2. Mix milk and water together.

  3. Trim the mutton slice, removing the bone, and cut the meat into small pieces.

  4. Dip the meat in pepper, salt, and flour, then place it in the basin.

  5. Add the chopped onion and parsley.

Cover and boil

  1. Fill the basin with water nearly to the top, wet the edges, and cover with a thick crust, pressing the edges firmly.

  2. Tie a floured cloth securely over the basin and plunge it into boiling water.

  3. Ensure the water continues boiling.

Serve

  1. Remove the cloth before serving, and serve with hot water, mashed potatoes, and beans.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle boiling.
Flour
Coats the meat and helps thicken the juices in the pudding.
Suet
Forms the rich, sturdy crust that holds the pudding together.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks with the meat.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling. Steady boiling cooks the meat and crust evenly; if the water drops, the pudding cooks slowly and the crust can turn heavy and soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mutton, pepper, flour, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mutton, pepper, flour, 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.

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