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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef, suet, flour, onions, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped suet and sifted flour, rubbing them together with your hands and adding salt.

  2. Gradually add cold water to form a stiff dough.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Season the beefsteak pieces with pepper and salt, and mix in the chopped onions.

  2. Roll the dough into a large, even sheet and place it in a pudding cloth in a large bowl.

  3. Add the seasoned meat and cold water to the cloth, then dredge with flour.

  4. Tie the cloth securely, leaving space for the pudding to swell.

Boil

  1. Boil a large pot of water and add the pudding, covering it tightly.

  2. Boil for 6-7 hours, replenishing with boiling water as needed.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during long cooking to add richness and keep the crust moist and tender.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure, which wraps and holds the filling together.
Beefsteak
Forms the main filling and contributes the meaty flavor as it cooks in its own juices.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and blend into the meat juices.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth with room to swell. Flour-based dough and the filling expand as they steam. Tying the cloth too tightly can restrict this expansion and cause the cloth to split or the pudding to compress.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, 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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