Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef, onions, herbs, and water, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a well-buttered pudding mold with the paste and wet the edges.

  2. Layer the beef, cut into neat scallops, in the mold.

  3. Sprinkle with minced onion, parsley, celery salt, thyme, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  4. Repeat layering until all ingredients are used.

  5. Fill the mold with cold water and cover with paste.

Steam and serve

  1. Place a buttered paper over the top and set in a saucepan with boiling water, reaching two-thirds up the outside of the mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Carefully turn out onto a dish and pour over hot gravy flavored with any piquant sauce.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the main body of the pudding and becomes tender during long, slow steaming.
Pudding paste
Encloses the filling and holds its moisture while the pudding steams.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor that permeates the meat during steaming.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The water in the saucepan must be kept boiling and only reach two-thirds up the mold. Too little water lets the pudding dry out, while submerging it can make the paste soggy and waterlogged. Steady, gentle heat cooks the meat through slowly and keeps the paste tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, thyme, marjoram, onion, parsley, butter):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, thyme, marjoram, onion, parsley, butter. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes