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Onion Pudding

A baked onion and breadcrumb mixture encased in a buttered flour paste, served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Onion Pudding

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Onion Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cut the peeled onions into small dice.

  3. Place them in a pie dish.

  4. Add breadcrumbs, butter, sage, salt, and pepper to the onions. Mix well.

  5. Cover the dish closely.

  6. Bake gently for 1 hour.

Make the pastry

  1. Rub the butter into the flour and breadcrumbs.

  2. Add baking powder and salt.

  3. Gradually add enough water to form a stiff paste.

Assemble and steam

  1. Line a basin with the paste.

  2. Fill it with the cooled onion mixture.

  3. Cover with more paste.

  4. Cover the basin with 2 or 3 folds of greased paper.

  5. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve in the basin with brown sauce on the side.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff paste that encloses the filling.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the paste rises and lightens.
Onions
Provide the main body, moisture and sweetness of the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the onions and help bind the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the onion mixture before filling the basin. Hot filling would soften the raw paste lining, make it sticky and tear it, and can start the baking powder reacting too early, so the pudding may turn out heavy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sage, 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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