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Beef-steak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef steak, suet, flour, and optional mushrooms, served with ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the suet dough

  1. Remove skin and stringy fibers from the suet and mince it finely.

  2. Sift flour into a large bowl.

  3. Gradually mix in the suet, rubbing it with your hands.

  4. Add cold water gradually to form a stiff dough.

  5. Roll the dough out into a large sheet.

Prepare the filling

  1. Trim the beef steak of bone and fat.

  2. Cut the steak into small thin pieces.

  3. Beat the pieces to tenderize.

  4. Season the steak with pepper and salt.

  5. Add mushrooms if desired.

Assemble and boil

  1. Place the beef in the center of the dough sheet.

  2. Top with a bit of butter rolled in flour.

  3. Fold the dough over the meat like a large dumpling.

  4. Tie it in a floured cloth, leaving space for expansion.

  5. Boil a large pot of water.

  6. Add the pudding, boiling for at least 3 hours, ensuring it continues to boil.

  7. Keep boiling water ready to replenish the pot as needed.

  8. Serve immediately with ketchup mixed into the gravy.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fresh beef suet
Melts into the flour during steaming, adding richness and a tender, moist crumb to the dough.
Fine flour
Forms the dough's structure, which holds the filling together while it steams.
Beef steak
Provides the savory meat filling, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the dough.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during steaming.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a steady boil. Steaming in a cloth relies on continuous boiling. If the water drops below a boil for long, the dough cooks unevenly and turns heavy and wet, so the pot must be topped up with boiling water.

“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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