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Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beefsteak, kidneys, suet, flour, and water, encased in a suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the rump steak into 1‑inch square pieces and each kidney into 8 pieces.

  2. Layer the bottom with steak and kidney pieces, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Pour in enough water to come within 2 inches of the top of the dish.

Make the crust

  1. Make a crust with the suet and flour, using milk as needed, and line a dish with it, leaving some crust to overlap the edge.

Seal and boil

  1. Moisten the crust edges, cover the pudding, and press the crusts together to seal.

  2. Flour a cloth, tie it around the pudding, and place it in boiling water for at least 4 hours, replenishing with hot water as needed.

  3. After boiling, cut a small hole in the top of the crust to prevent bursting and serve in the basin.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rump steak
Provides the meat and body of the filling as it becomes tender during long simmering.
Kidneys
Add a rich, savoury, distinctive flavour to the meat filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich as it steams.
Flour
Forms the structure of the crust that encloses the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling for at least 4 hours. Meat needs long, steady simmering to become tender, and the water must stay at a boil. Replenishing with hot water keeps the temperature up so the pudding cooks through without drying out.

“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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