Name: Beefsteak Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup suet, chopped fine; 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted; 1 teaspoon salt; Water, sufficient to make a dough; 1 pound beefsteak or a slice of neck; 1 beef kidney, cut in small pieces (optional); Salt and pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (for seasoning)

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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 cup suet, chopped fine
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon salt
Water, sufficient to make a dough
1 pound beefsteak or a slice of neck
1 beef kidney, cut in small pieces (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (for seasoning)

Directions

Prepare the dough

In a bowl, combine suet, flour, and salt.
Add enough water to form a dough and roll it out.

Fill and wrap

Line a buttered bowl with the dough.
Fill the bowl with beefsteak and kidney, season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with flour.
Flour a pudding cloth and tie it tightly over the bowl.

Boil

Immerse the bowl in briskly boiling water and boil steadily for 4 hours.

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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,677 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Suet: Melts during boiling to keep the dough rich, moist and tender.
All-purpose flour: Forms the dough's structure, holding the filling together as it cooks.
Beefsteak: Provides the main meat filling, becoming tender during the long, gentle boil.
Beef kidney: Adds a richer, deeper meat flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil steadily in briskly boiling water. The bowl must be fully submerged and the water kept boiling throughout. Steady heat cooks the meat through and sets the suet-based dough, while a drop in temperature can leave the filling underdone or the pudding heavy.

“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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Beefsteak Pudding