Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bowl and filling
Grease a pudding bowl with dripping.
Roll out the suet to ½ inch thick and line the bowl with it.
Cut off the edges and roll out trimmings for a cover.
Flatten the steak and cut it into strips about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide.
Remove skin and fat from the kidney and cut it into dice.
Mix flour, salt, and pepper on a plate, toss each piece of steak in this mixture.
Place a piece of fat and a piece of kidney on each steak strip and roll it up.
Put each roll into the pudding bowl and pour over the cold water or stock.
Cover and boil
Wet the edges of the lining and cover with the prepared paste, pressing edges tightly.
Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, flour the center, and place it over the bowl.
Tie the cloth with string halfway down the bowl, ensuring it is firm.
Plunge the pudding into a saucepan of boiling salted water and boil for 3 hours.
Keep the pudding covered with boiling water, replenishing as needed.
When ready, lift the pudding from the saucepan and let it stand for 2-3 minutes.
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.
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Suet
- Forms the crust lining and cover, and melts during boiling to moisten and enrich the pudding.
- Stewing steak
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through the long, slow boil.
- Ox kidney
- Adds a rich, strongly flavoured meat that cooks through inside the pudding.
- Flour
- Lightly coats the steak, helping the filling thicken and the juices stay in.
The step that matters
Sealing the cover and tying the cloth. If the edges are not wet and pressed tightly, or the cloth is loose, steam and water can get in during the 3-hour boil and make the pudding soggy or waterlogged.
“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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