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Beefsteak and Kidney Puddinc

A boiled pudding made with beef steak, kidney, flour, suet, and pastry.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak and kidney into pieces about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Season well with pepper and salt, then dredge lightly with flour.

Line and fill the basin

  1. Lightly butter a round‑bottomed pudding basin.

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

  3. Add the beef and kidney to the basin and pour in 3 to 4 tablespoons of water.

  4. Cover with a piece of pastry, pressing it firmly together with your thumb.

  5. Tie the pudding basin in a floured cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Place it in a saucepan with about 4 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Keep boiling, adding more boiling water as needed.

  3. When cooked, remove from water, untie the cloth, and turn the pudding onto a dish.

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

Rump steak
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, slow steaming.
Beef kidney
Adds a rich, savory depth of flavor to the filling.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and the pastry tender.
Flour
Coats the meat so its juices thicken into a gravy-like sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a full boil. Adding cold water drops the temperature and slows cooking, so the pudding can turn out undercooked. Topping up with boiling water keeps the heat steady so the meat cooks through and the pastry sets.

“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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