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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet crust, flour, and diced round steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Remove all membrane from the suet and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the suet with flour, salt, pepper, and enough cold water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick.

Fill and wrap

  1. Season the steak pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Butter a 2-quart earthen bowl.

  3. Lay the suet crust inside the bowl, pressing it against the sides.

  4. Leave the crust hanging over the sides of the bowl.

  5. Add the seasoned beef and ½ cup of cold water into the bowl.

  6. Fold the crust over the meat, wetting the edges to seal it tightly.

  7. Wet a cloth in hot water and dust it with flour.

  8. Cover the pudding with the cloth.

  9. Tie the cloth securely under the bowl to prevent water from entering.

Steam and serve

  1. Boil a large pot of water and place the bowl in it, boiling steadily for 3 hours.

  2. Remove the cloth, turn the pudding onto a hot platter, and serve it hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Suet
Melts during long cooking, enriching the crust and keeping it moist and tender.
Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff dough that encloses the filling.
Round steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender through long, gentle steaming.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust over the meat. If the edges are not wetted and pressed closed, water can enter during the long boil and the filling becomes soggy and diluted. A tight seal keeps the steak moist and the pudding intact.

“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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