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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with salt pork, round steak, butter, suet crust, and kidney gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and lamb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the salt pork until delicately brown.

  2. Place the fried salt pork at the bottom of a quart earthen bowl.

  3. Layer the raw round steak on top of the pork.

  4. Add the butter.

  5. Dust the steak with black pepper.

  6. Cover the bowl.

  7. Place the bowl in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides of the bowl.

  8. Put a wire tea-stand or meat-rack in the pot for the bowl to rest on.

  9. Cover the pot closely.

  10. Boil for three hours, replenishing water as needed.

  11. After 2.25 hours, pour off half of the gravy.

  12. Sprinkle the meat with coarse sea salt.

Make the crust

  1. Prepare the crust.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped suet, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Mix the crust mixture well.

  4. Add ice water gradually until the mixture resembles biscuit dough, handling it minimally.

  5. Leave the bowl uncovered to allow steam to reach the crust.

  6. Cover the pot tightly.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once cooked, invert the bowl onto a deep platter, meat-side down.

  2. Pour the gravy over the inverted pudding.

  3. To make the gravy, cook the chopped kidneys, onion, and cayenne in cold water for 30 minutes.

  4. Skim off any scum from the gravy.

  5. Remove veins and fat from the kidneys.

  6. Wash the kidneys.

  7. Thicken the gravy with flour before serving.

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. Pork + lambtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Raw round steak
Forms the main meat filling, becoming tender and juicy during long, gentle steaming.
Suet
Adds richness and a short, tender texture to the crust as it melts into the flour.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust and thickens the gravy.
Baking powder
Helps the crust rise lightly, giving it a softer texture.
Lamb kidneys
Add deep, savory flavor to the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the crust steaming, not wet. The crust must be exposed to steam while the pot stays covered, so it cooks through and turns light. Handling the dough minimally keeps it tender, since overworked flour develops gluten and makes it tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, egg, butter, pepper, flour, lamb):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, egg, butter, pepper, flour, lamb. 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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