Why it works: Pepper and flour 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 ↓
Meat Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the rump steak into pieces about ¼ inch thick.
Season the steak with salt and pepper, then dust with flour until well coated.
Place the seasoned steak in a pudding basin, adding any remaining seasoning and optional oysters.
Pour ½ cup of water over the meat and moisten the edges of the paste.
Roll out the remaining paste to form a lid and press it down onto the basin.
Cook and serve
Tie the basin with a pudding cloth and place it in a saucepan of boiling water.
Boil continuously for nearly 2 hours, adding more water as needed.
Check for doneness by inserting a knife into the pudding; if the meat is tender, it is done.
Carefully turn the pudding onto a dish.
Serve without opening it to add gravy.
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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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,663 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,582 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rump steak
- Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle boiling.
- Pudding paste
- Forms the enclosing crust that seals in moisture and steams the meat.
- Flour
- Coats the steak so it holds juices and helps thicken the surrounding liquid.
- Water
- Adds moisture inside the basin so the meat steams rather than dries.
The step that matters
Keeping the pudding at a steady boil. Long boiling breaks down tough beef fibres into tenderness. If the water level drops or the boil stops, the meat can stay tough and the paste can dry out, so water must be topped up during the whole cooking time.
“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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