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Beef Steak Pudding

A savory pudding made by encasing seasoned beef steak in a flour and suet crust and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef steak into pieces 1 inch wide and 3 inches long.

  2. Season the steak with pepper and salt.

Make the crust

  1. Make a crust by mixing flour, dripping or suet, and enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the paste and line a basin greased with dripping.

  3. Press the paste flat where it folds over.

  4. Add the seasoned steak and ½ teacup of water.

  5. Cover with a small round piece of paste and press to seal.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie a cloth over the basin and place it in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3½ hours if using dripping, or 4 hours if using suet.

  3. Loosen the edge with a knife, turn out carefully, and serve hot.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour 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

Beef steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long steaming.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Dripping or suet
Adds fat to the crust, keeping it rich and tender as it steams.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding before boiling. If the top paste is not pressed firmly to the edges, water can seep into the basin during the long boil, making the filling soggy and the crust loose.

“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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