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Beef Steak Pudding

A savory pudding made with beef steaks, flour, suet, milk, egg, and seasonings, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Mix flour, chopped suet, milk, and egg together until well combined.

  2. Roll out the mixture to ½ inch thick.

  3. Line a bowl with the rolled mixture.

Prepare the filling

  1. Trim the skin from the meat.

  2. Beat the steaks with a chopper.

  3. Cut the beaten steaks into medium-sized pieces.

  4. Season the meat with pepper and salt.

  5. Layer the seasoned meat in the bowl with blanched oysters and slices of potatoes or onions.

  6. Cover the top with the remaining paste and tie a cloth over the bowl.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Before serving, add a little cullis and ketchup.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the suet paste that encloses the filling.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry rich and tender as it steams.
Egg
Binds the paste so it holds together around the filling.
Beef steaks
Provide the main meat flavour and become tender during long gentle cooking.
Blanched oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.
Potatoes or onions
Add body and moisture to the filling as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 2 hours. Steaming must be long and gentle enough to tenderise the beef and fully cook the suet paste. Too fast or too short a boil leaves tough meat and a doughy crust, so the pudding needs a steady simmer and enough water kept topped up.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, beef, pepper, oyster, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, beef, pepper, oyster, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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