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Steak Pudding

A savory pudding made with stewed rump steak, onion, garlic, tomatoes, cloves, and chili, encased in a suet and flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Partly stew the rump steak in water until tender; let it cool.

  2. Make a suet and flour crust and line a pudding basin with it.

  3. Layer the meat, onion, garlic, tomatoes, cloves, and chili in the basin.

  4. Pour the meat gravy over the layers.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover with crust, tie a cloth over it, and boil for 2.5 hours.

  2. Turn out onto a dish and serve, optionally garnished with vegetables or mushrooms.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 through slow stewing and steaming.
Suet and flour
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its moisture during boiling.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the filling.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and moisture that blend into the gravy.

The step that matters

Partly stew the steak until tender. Steak that is not tender before the long boil will stay tough, because the boiling steams the meat but does not fully break down tough connective tissue quickly. Stewing first gives the meat a head start.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, onion, garlic, tomato, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, onion, garlic, tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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