Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak Pudding

A pudding made with beef suet, flour, beefsteak, onions, and water, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Add the salt and gradually pour in cold water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll the dough into a large, even sheet.

Fill and wrap

  1. Place a pudding cloth in a large bowl and arrange the dough in it.

  2. Season the beefsteak pieces with pepper and salt, and add the chopped onions.

  3. Place the seasoned meat in the dough, add 1 cup of cold water, and dredge with flour.

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

Cook

  1. Boil a large pot of water and add the pudding, cooking 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 into the flour during cooking, keeping the dough rich, tender and moist.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure, which holds the filling together during long boiling.
Beefsteak
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely, leaving space for the pudding to swell. Dough and filling expand as they heat and steam. A loose or tight-fitting cloth can let water in or burst the pudding, so room to swell protects the filling.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes