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Beefsteak Pudding

A savory pudding made with beef, oysters, potatoes, onions, and a suet dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, chopped suet, milk, salt, and egg until well combined.

  2. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and line a basin or bowl with it.

  3. Trim the skin from the beef, chop it into medium-sized pieces, and season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and boil

  1. Layer the beef, blanched oysters, and sliced potatoes or onions alternately in the basin.

  2. Cover the top with the remaining dough and tie a cloth over the basin.

  3. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little culinary sauce and ketchup poured into it.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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 dough structure that encloses the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and rich during boiling.
Egg
Binds the dough so it holds together when rolled and steamed.
Beef steaks
Provides the meat filling that becomes tender during long gentle cooking.
Blanched oysters
Adds savory, briny flavor to the filling.
Potatoes and onions
Add body and sweetness to the filling while absorbing meat juices.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 2 hours. The pudding must be fully enclosed and kept at a steady simmer so the beef becomes tender and the dough cooks through without drying or leaking. Too hard a boil or an unsealed cloth can let water in and spoil the texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, beef, pepper, oyster, potato):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, beef, pepper, oyster, potato. 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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