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Beefsteak Pudding

A pudding of beef suet, flour, sliced beef steak, oysters, stock, and oyster liquor, boiled for three hours.

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Finely chop the beef suet and rub it into the flour with your hands, adding a little salt.

  2. Mix the suet-flour mixture with water to form a smooth paste.

  3. Roll the paste out to ⅛ inch thick.

  4. Line a quart pudding basin with the paste.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak into thin slices.

  2. Flour the sliced steak.

  3. Season the floured steak with pepper and salt.

  4. Put the oysters and their liquor into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat and strain the liquor into a basin.

  6. Remove the gills from the oysters, leaving only the soft parts.

  7. Roll the slices of steak.

Assemble and boil

  1. Fill the basin with the rolled steak slices and oysters.

  2. Pour in the stock and oyster liquor.

  3. Cover the basin with paste.

  4. Boil the pudding for 3 hours, ensuring the water is boiling before adding the pudding.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + oystertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the paste that wraps the filling and holds it together.
Beef suet
Rubbed into the flour to make the paste rich and tender as it cooks.
Rump or beefsteak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle boiling.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding with water already boiling. Adding the pudding to water that is already boiling helps the paste begin cooking quickly and seal, while a steady boil over the full 3 hours keeps the pudding cooked through and the meat tender.

“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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