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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with diced rump steak, flour, suet, broth, parsley, and pickled onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a paste with the suet and salted flour mixed with a little ice water.

  2. Roll it out and line a round bowl with the paste.

Fill and seal

  1. Cut the meat into dice, season with pepper and salt, and roll in flour.

  2. Place the meat inside the paste, sprinkle with parsley and pickled onion, and pour in the cold broth.

  3. Cover the top with a paste crust, pressing it down firmly around the edges.

  4. Wrap the bowl in a stout cloth, tying it tightly underneath.

Cook and serve

  1. Plunge the bowl into boiling water and cook at a steady boil for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

  2. Untie the cloth, carefully invert the bowl over a hot dish, and turn out the pudding to serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Rump steak
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender during the long steamed cooking.
Prepared flour
Forms the paste that encloses the filling and sets into a sturdy, tender crust.
Powdered suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust short and rich as it cooks.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that forms gravy inside the pudding.

The step that matters

Pressing the crust seal. If the top crust is not pressed firmly around the edges, steam and liquid can escape or the filling can leak during the long boil, leaving the pudding watery or broken. A tight seal keeps the contents moist and holds the shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, parsley. 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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