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Beef Pudding

A boiled beef pudding wrapped in pastry, seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, onions, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak into three lengthwise pieces, then slice slantways into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Remove sinew and excess fat if using cuttings from the butcher.

  3. In a bowl, mix the meat with salt, pepper, flour, and chopped onions.

Assemble and boil

  1. Roll out the pastry dough to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Line a basin with pudding cloth, sprinkle with flour, and lay in the pastry.

  3. Add the meat mixture and a few pieces of fat, then pour in the water.

  4. Fold the pastry over the meat to seal it well, tying the cloth loosely.

  5. Boil in 4 quarts of water for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Remove from water, let cool slightly, then cut the string and turn it out onto a dish.

  2. Remove the cloth and serve.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 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

Steak
Provides the main meat filling that becomes tender during the long boil.
Pastry dough
Encloses the filling and forms the outer crust that holds the pudding together.
Flour
Lightly coats the meat and helps thicken the juices that form inside the pudding.
Onions
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as they cook in the enclosed filling.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth loosely. The pudding is boiled, and the filling and water expand as they heat. A loose tie leaves room for this expansion so the cloth and pastry do not burst or squeeze out juices, while the folded pastry still seals the meat well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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