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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled meat and suet crust pudding made with round steak, suet, flour, water, and optional baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all gristle and skin from the steak, leaving a little fat.

  2. Season the steak with salt and pepper.

Make the crust

  1. Rub the chopped suet into the flour to make a suet crust.

  2. Add salt and mix with ice water to form a dough.

  3. Grease a quart bowl.

  4. Roll the crust to ½ inch thick.

  5. Line the bowl with the crust.

Assemble and boil

  1. Place the seasoned meat into the bowl.

  2. Pour ½ cup water into the bowl.

  3. Cover the top with the remaining crust, ensuring there are no cracks.

  4. Tie the bowl with a floured cloth.

  5. Boil for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cloth.

  2. Run a thin knife around the edge.

  3. Carefully turn the pudding out onto a hot 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + 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

Round steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender during long gentle boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust rich and tender as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Ice water
Keeps the dough cold and workable, helping it stay tender rather than tough.

The step that matters

Covering the top with crust without cracks. Any gap lets water into the bowl and the filling can turn soggy or boil out, so the seal must be complete before tying and boiling.

“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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