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Beefsteak and Kidney Puddings

A pudding made with beef, kidney, flour, butter, and water, wrapped in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Kidney Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef and kidney into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then dredge with flour.

  3. Butter a round-bottomed pudding basin.

  4. Roll out pastry to ½ inch thick and line the basin.

Assemble and cook

  1. Add the beef and kidney, then pour in 3-4 tablespoons of water.

  2. Cover with pastry, press edges together, and tie in a floured cloth.

  3. Place in a saucepan with 4 quarts of boiling water and keep boiling.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Beef
Provides the main meaty texture and rich savoury flavour of the filling.
Beef kidney
Adds a deeper, more intense savoury flavour and firm chewy texture to the filling.
Flour
Coats the meat so it thickens the juices into a gravy during steaming.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pastry releases cleanly and adds richness.
Pastry (in the method)
Encloses the filling and holds in steam and juices during the long boil.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling throughout. Steaming relies on a steady supply of boiling water to cook the meat through and keep the pastry tender. If the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and the suet-free pastry can turn heavy and undercooked.

“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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