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Steak Pudding

A baked dish of beef or mutton wrapped in a dough made from flour, suet, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix flour, suet, and salt in a bowl; add cold water to form a stiff dough.

  2. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick.

  3. Season the beef or mutton with pepper and salt.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place the meat in an earthen dish and add 1 cup of water.

  2. Cover the dish with the rolled-out dough.

  3. Cook in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 5 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff dough that encloses the meat and holds its shape while cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and rich during the long cooking.
Beef or mutton
Provides the main filling, which becomes tender through slow, long cooking.
Water
Creates steam and moisture in the dish, keeping the meat from drying out.

The step that matters

Cover the dish with the rolled-out dough. The dough must seal the dish so steam stays inside and the meat cooks gently in its own juices. A loose or gapped seal lets moisture escape and the meat dries out over the long bake.

“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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