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Beefsteak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, and beef, wrapped in pastry and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the chopped suet and salt.

  2. Add water gradually to form a paste.

  3. Flour your work surface, rolling pin, and hands.

  4. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick.

Fill and wrap

  1. Butter a round-bottomed pudding basin and line it with the paste, leaving some overhanging.

  2. Cut the steak into small thin pieces, season with salt and pepper, and roll each piece with a bit of fat and parsley.

  3. Place the steak rolls in the basin and add a small amount of water.

  4. Roll out the remaining paste and cover the top of the basin, pressing down with your thumb.

  5. Tie the basin in a floured pudding cloth.

Boil

  1. Place it in a saucepan with 1 gallon of boiling water and keep it boiling for nearly 2 hours, adding more 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that encloses the filling and sets as a sturdy crust.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust rich and tender during long steaming.
Steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender through long, gentle boiling.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling. The pudding cooks by steam and boiling water around the basin. If the water drops, the crust turns heavy and the meat cooks unevenly, so water must be topped up during the long boil.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter. 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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