Name: Beef or Mutton Steak Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; ½ cup beef or mutton suet; cold water (as needed); coarse sea salt (to taste); beef or mutton steaks (enough for filling); black pepper (to taste)

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 or Mutton Steak Pudding

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup beef or mutton suet
cold water (as needed)
coarse sea salt (to taste)
beef or mutton steaks (enough for filling)
black pepper (to taste)

Directions

Prepare

Make a stiff crust by mixing flour and suet with cold water and seasoning with salt.
Season the beef or mutton steaks with pepper and salt.

Assemble and boil

Wrap the seasoned meat in the crust like an apple pudding.
Tie the pudding in a cloth and place it in boiling water.
Boil a small pudding for 3 hours or a large one for 5 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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

All-purpose flour: Forms the structure of the crust that encloses the meat.
Beef or mutton suet: Adds fat that keeps the crust rich and tender as it cooks.
Beef or mutton steaks: Form the savoury filling that cooks inside the crust.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding in a cloth and place it in boiling water. The cloth must be tied firmly so the crust holds its shape and the water cannot seep into the filling. Keeping the water at a full boil helps the pudding cook evenly and the crust set through to the meat.

“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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Beef or Mutton Steak Pudding