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Beef Steak and Kidney Pudding

A pudding made with beef steak, kidney, suet, flour, pepper, and salt, boiled for three hours.

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 and Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Beat and cut the rump steak into long strips or ½-inch square pieces.

  2. Season the steak with pepper and salt, then dredge with flour.

  3. Cut the beef kidney into thin slices and season similarly.

Assemble and cook

  1. Line a basin with the suet paste and layer the seasoned steak and kidney inside.

  2. Cover with more suet paste and tie with cloth.

  3. Plunge into boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Drain, untie, and serve with boiling stock.

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

Rump steak
Provides the main meaty body of the filling, becoming tender during the long simmer.
Beef kidney
Adds a rich, deeply savoury flavour and firmer texture to the filling.
Flour
Dusting the seasoned meat helps lightly thicken the juices that form in the pudding.
Suet paste
Forms the encasing crust that holds the filling together while it steams and cooks.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. The pudding must stay fully submerged in steadily boiling water for the whole time. Long, gentle steaming breaks down the connective tissue in the steak and kidney, so the meat turns tender; if the water drops or stops boiling, the meat stays tough and the crust can turn soggy.

“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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