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Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

A pudding made with beefsteak and kidney pieces, encased in a suet and flour crust, boiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the rump steak into 1-inch pieces and each kidney into eight pieces.

  2. Make a crust with 6 oz of suet and 1 lb of flour, using milk as needed.

  3. Line a dish with the crust, leaving some for the top.

  4. Layer the bottom with steak and kidney, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Add another layer of steak, kidney, and seasoning until the dish is full.

  6. Pour in enough water to come within 2 inches of the top.

Cover and boil

  1. Moisten the edges of the crust, cover the pudding, and seal the edges.

  2. Wrap the pudding in a floured cloth and tie it up.

  3. Boil in water for the cooking time specified.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Kidneys
Adds a rich, strong meaty flavour to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and moist as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust that holds the pudding together.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust before boiling. If the edges are not moistened and sealed, water can seep into the filling and make the crust soggy and loose, so the pudding can fall apart.

“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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