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Steak and Kidney Pudding

A boiled pudding made with steak, kidneys, suet, flour, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steak and Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a suet paste by mixing flour, breadcrumbs, baking powder, and salt with about 1 cup of water, then roll it out.

  2. Grease a basin with dripping and cut out a cover from the paste. Line the basin with the paste.

  3. Trim and cut the steak and kidneys into small pieces. Dredge them with a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Finely chop the onion and fill the basin with the meat and onion. Pour in ½ cup of cold water.

Cook and serve

  1. Wet the edges of the paste cover, place it on top, and pinch the edges together. Tie a floured cloth over the basin.

  2. Plunge the basin into a pot of boiling water and boil for 2½ to 3 hours with the pot lid on.

  3. Prepare a hot dish, turn the pudding basin upside down on it, leave for a few minutes, then remove the basin.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Flour
Forms the suet paste that encloses the filling and sets as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat to the paste, keeping it rich and tender as it cooks.
Steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle boiling.
Sheep kidneys
Adds a rich, deeply savoury meat flavour to the filling.
Fine breadcrumbs
Add body to the paste, giving it a softer, lighter texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the paste rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste cover. The edges must be wetted and pinched firmly so steam cannot escape or water cannot seep in during the long boil, which would make the pudding soggy or leaky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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