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Beef Steak Pudding

A pudding made from beef pieces simmered in water, thickened with butter and flour, wrapped in cloth and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Place the meat in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then cook for about 30 minutes.

  3. If the steak is tough, pound it before cooking.

  4. Mix butter and flour together to thicken the gravy, then set aside to cool.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Roll out the crust thick and line a large bowl with it.

  2. Once the gravy is cool, add the meat and some of the gravy to the bowl, saving some gravy for serving.

  3. Tightly secure the cloth around the pudding and tie it.

Cook

  1. Place the pudding in boiling water and cook for 1.5 to 2 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.

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

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

  2. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Beef
Provides the main savory meat filling that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the gravy so it clings to the meat.
Rich crust
Forms the pastry casing that holds the filling and cooks as it steams.

The step that matters

Let the gravy cool before filling the crust. Adding hot gravy to raw pastry can make the crust soggy and weaken it, so the gravy should be cool before it goes into the bowl.

“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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