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 dough
Remove skin and stringy fibers from the suet, then mince it finely.
Sift flour into a large bowl.
Add suet gradually to the flour, rubbing it in with your hands until well mixed.
Pour in cold water gradually to form a stiff dough.
Roll the dough out into a large sheet.
Fill and wrap
Cut the steak into small thin pieces.
Beat the steak pieces to tenderize.
Season the steak with pepper and salt.
Add mushrooms if desired.
Place the beef in the center of the dough sheet.
Add a bit of butter rolled in flour on top of the beef.
Fold the dough over the meat like a large dumpling.
Dredge a thick cloth with flour.
Wrap the pudding tightly with the cloth, leaving space for it to swell.
Tie the cloth securely.
Seal the gap with flour to prevent water from entering.
Boil and serve
Boil a large pot of water.
Add the pudding to the boiling water.
Let it boil for at least 3 hours, maintaining a steady boil.
Keep boiling water ready to replenish the pot if needed.
Do not remove the pudding until just before serving.
Mix some ketchup with the gravy on your plate before serving.
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.
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 during boiling, adding richness and a moist, tender crumb to the dough.
- Fine flour
- Forms the stiff dough that wraps and holds the filling together during boiling.
- Beef steak
- Provides the savoury meat filling that cooks gently inside the dough.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the filling as it melts into the meat.
The step that matters
Keep the pudding fully submerged in a steady boil. Wrapping must be sealed and the pot kept boiling, since water entering the cloth makes the dough soggy and uneven, and the long steady boil cooks the dense filling through.
“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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