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Beef-Steak Pudding

A savory pudding made with beef suet, steaks, onions, and ketchup, baked in a pudding cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef-Steak Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine flour, minced beef suet, and salt in a bowl. Mix with cold water to form a dough.

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

Fill and wrap

  1. Beat the steaks with a rolling pin and season with pepper and salt. Mix minced onions with the seasoning.

  2. Roll up the steaks and pack them neatly in the lined basin. Add a little gravy and ketchup.

  3. Egg the edge of the paste and fold it over the filling tightly.

  4. Butter the center of a pudding cloth, dust with flour, and tie it over the basin's mouth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the basin in a pan of boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

  2. A quarter hour before serving, remove from water, take off the cloth, and turn it out onto a serving dish.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the dough that encloses the filling and holds its shape while boiling.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the dough, keeping it rich and tender during long cooking.
Steaks
Provide the meaty filling, which becomes tender through long, gentle boiling.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the filling as they cook.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy poured over the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste edge. Folding the paste tightly and sealing it keeps the juices in and boiling water out during the three-hour boil, so the filling stays moist and well cooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, pepper, ketchup, butter. 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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