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Beef Steak Pudding

A pudding made from soaked salt beef wrapped in a suet crust and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a good crust with drippings or finely shredded mutton suet.

  2. Season the soaked salt beef with pepper and place it into the crust.

Boil

  1. Roll the crust up tightly, tie it in a cloth, and boil it.

  2. Boil for five hours if the beef weighs about four or five pounds.

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. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt beef
Forms the savory, meaty filling that gives the pudding its main flavor and bulk.
Drippings or mutton suet
Fat that shortens the crust, keeping it tender and rich rather than tough.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for the full time. The long boil must stay steadily at a simmer so heat reaches the centre of the beef and crust. If the water drops off the boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and the beef may stay tough. Tying the cloth firmly keeps water out so the crust cooks as a sealed package.

“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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