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Beefsteak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, beef, bacon, and gravy.

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 ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Finely chop the clarified suet, dredging it with a little flour while mincing.

  2. Mix the suet with flour, salt, and enough water to form a smooth paste.

  3. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick.

  4. Butter a basin and line it with the rolled paste.

Fill and steam

  1. Place thin slices of bacon over each beef slice and season the bacon and beef with spiced pepper.

  2. Roll the bacon and beef slices up.

  3. Layer the beef collops in the basin, pouring some strong gravy between the layers.

  4. Seal the top with paste, tie the basin with a cloth, and steam for 3 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

Clarified suet
Forms a rich, short paste that keeps the crust tender and moist.
All-purpose flour
Gives the suet paste its structure so it holds together when rolled and steamed.
Beef
Provides the main filling, cooking gently in steam to stay tender.
Cold cooked bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the beef as it steams.
Strong gravy
Adds moisture and concentrated savory flavor between the beef layers.

The step that matters

Seal the top with paste. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the basin. A gap lets the filling dry out or the gravy leak, so the crust must close fully before tying.

“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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