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 ↓
Hump-steak and Oyster Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pudding
Preheat a large pot of water to boiling.
Mix suet and flour to form a crust, leaving a small piece to overlap the edge.
Line a dish with the crust, covering the bottom with steak and kidney pieces.
Season with salt and pepper, then add another layer of steak, kidney, and seasoning.
Repeat until the dish is full, then add enough water to come within 1 inch of the top.
Moisten the crust edges, cover the pudding, and press the crusts together to seal.
Flour a cloth, wring it out in hot water, and tie it around the pudding.
Boil and serve
Place the pudding in boiling water and boil for at least 4 hours, replenishing with hot water as needed.
After boiling, cut a round piece from the top of the crust to prevent bursting.
Serve the pudding in the basin or an ornamental dish, garnished with a napkin.
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
- Rump steak
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long, slow boil.
- Kidneys
- Add a rich, savoury, deeply meaty flavour to the filling.
- Suet
- Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender while it steams.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the crust, binding the suet into a dough that holds the filling.
The step that matters
Boiling for a full 4 hours with water topped up. Steak and kidney need long, gentle simmering to become tender, and the crust steams through only if the water stays hot and at the level needed. Letting the pot boil dry or cool would leave the meat tough and the crust underdone.
“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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