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Beef Steak Pudding

A boiled pudding made from thinly sliced beef steak, chopped kidneys, flour, baking powder, and water.

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 ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the beef steak and kidneys with salt, pepper, and water.

Make the pastry

  1. In another bowl, combine flour and baking powder, then mix into a firm paste.

  2. Roll out the paste and line a basin with it, leaving some overhang.

Assemble and boil

  1. Fill the basin with the meat mixture and cover with the overhanging paste.

  2. Cover the basin with a pudding cloth and secure it.

  3. Plunge the basin into boiling water.

  4. Boil for 2½ hours, ensuring the water covers the basin but does not overflow.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour 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

Beef steak
Provides the main meaty body and savoury flavour of the filling.
Sheep's kidneys
Adds a rich, robust flavour and a tender, slightly chewy texture to the filling.
Flour
Forms the firm paste that structures the pudding crust and holds the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pastry, giving it a softer rise as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keeping the boiling water level. The basin must stay submerged for the whole cooking time so the pastry cooks evenly through steam and heat. If the water drops too low, the top of the pudding dries out and the crust cooks unevenly; if it overflows, water can seep under the cloth and make the pudding soggy.

“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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