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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef, flour, suet, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, suet, and salt to make a paste.

  2. Line a bowl with the paste, reserving some to cover the top.

Fill and cook

  1. Place the cut meat into the bowl, sprinkling with pepper, salt, and a little flour.

  2. Fill the bowl with cold water and cover with the reserved paste.

  3. Tie the bowl in a cloth and boil steadily for three hours.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender and savory during long, gentle cooking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that wraps the filling and sets into a sturdy crust.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust moist and rich as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tie the bowl in a cloth and boil steadily for three hours. The cloth must be secured tightly and the water kept at a steady simmer. Loose wrapping lets water seep in and soften the crust, while a rolling boil that drops too low slows the meat's breakdown and leaves it tough.

“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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