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Baked Beef Steak Pudding

A baked pudding made with beef steak, milk, eggs, flour, onions, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix milk, eggs, and flour to create a batter.

  3. Spread a little batter at the bottom of a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Season the beef steak with salt, pepper, and chopped onions, then place it in the dish.

  2. Pour the remaining batter over the steak.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until cooked through.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, tender crumb as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter's structure, setting into the pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Beef steak
Provides the main filling, whose juices flavour the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Spreading a thin base of batter. A thin batter layer at the bottom of the dish keeps the steak from sitting directly on the pan, which helps prevent the base from scorching or drying out before the batter above sets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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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