Name: Small Beef-steak Pvddino
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; 6 ounces suet, finely minced; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ pint cold water; 1 pound tender steak, free from bone and skin; ½ ounce coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ pint water

Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Small Beef-steak Pvddino

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

Make a firm, smooth paste with the flour, suet, coarse sea salt, and cold water.
Line a basin that holds 1½ pints with the paste.

Fill and boil

Season the steak with the coarse sea salt and black pepper, then lay it in the crust.
Pour in the ¼ pint of water.
Roll out the cover, close the pudding carefully, and tie a floured cloth over it.
Boil for 3½ hours.

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.

Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 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

Flour: Forms the structure of the suet crust that holds the filling together.
Suet: Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich as it cooks.
Tender steak: Provides the main filling, which becomes tender and juicy during long steaming.

The step that matters

Closing the pudding. A poorly sealed cover lets water into the pudding during the long boil, making the crust soggy and the filling watery. Pressing the edges firmly keeps the steam and juices sealed inside.

“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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Small Beef-steak Pvddino