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Small Beef-steak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef steak encased in a suet and flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Small Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, minced suet, ½ teaspoon salt, and cold water to form a firm, smooth paste.

  2. Line a 1.5‑pint basin with the paste.

Fill and cover

  1. Season the steak with ½ ounce salt and ½ teaspoon pepper, then place it in the crust.

  2. Pour ¼ cup water over the steak.

  3. Roll out the remaining paste to cover the pudding, seal it carefully.

Boil

  1. Tie a floured cloth over the basin and boil for 3.5 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 structure of the paste that encloses the filling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crust as it melts during cooking.
Tender steak
Forms the main filling, becoming soft and juicy as it cooks slowly in the steam.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding. A tight seal keeps steam and moisture inside the basin during the long boil. A gap lets water seep in and leaves the filling soggy and the crust thin.

“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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