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Beef Steak Pudding

A savory pudding made with steak, suet, kidneys, bread crumbs, and flour, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, flour, suet, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste and line a basin, leaving a small hole at the bottom.

Fill and boil

  1. Cut the steak into pieces and dredge with flour.

  2. Chop the kidneys small, season with pepper and salt, and place on top of the steak.

  3. Cover with a thick layer of paste and boil for about 3 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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender and savory during long, slow cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry moist and rich as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the juices and helps the steak pieces hold together.
Bread crumbs
Give the pastry body and a light, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Lifts the pastry so it becomes lighter rather than dense.
Kidneys
Contribute a rich, deeply savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Leave a small hole in the pastry lining. The hole lets steam escape during boiling. Without it, pressure can build inside the pudding and the pastry may burst or turn heavy.

“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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