Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steak Pudding

A stew of beef simmered in water, thickened with butter and flour, wrapped in a crust and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Combine the beef and enough water to cover it in a stew pan. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook for about 30 minutes until tender.

  3. Mix the butter and flour together to thicken the gravy. Set aside to cool.

Assemble and steam

  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 and tie it firmly.

  4. Place the bowl in boiling water and cook for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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

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
Forms the main filling, and slow cooking softens its connective tissue into tenderness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the gravy so it clings to the meat.
Rich crust
Forms the pastry lining that encloses the filling and holds it together while steaming.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly. A firm seal keeps boiling water from seeping into the bowl. Water entering the pudding would dilute the gravy and leave the crust soggy.

“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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes