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Steak Pudding

A boiled pudding made by wrapping beef or mutton steaks in a suet and flour dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, shredded suet, and salt.

  2. Add cold water gradually to form a stiff dough.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Season the steaks with pepper and salt.

  2. Roll out the dough and wrap the steaks as you would for an apple pudding.

  3. Tie the pudding in a cloth and place it in boiling water.

Boil

  1. Boil for 3 hours, or 5 hours for a large 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. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encases the steaks.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and moist during long boiling.
Cold water
Binds the flour and suet into a stiff, workable dough.
Beef or mutton steaks
Supply the meat and juices that flavour the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water gradually. Adding water slowly lets the flour absorb it evenly, so the dough becomes stiff and workable rather than sticky or crumbly. Too much water at once makes it hard to roll and can toughen the crust.

“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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