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Beef-steak Pudding

A pudding made with beef steaks, suet, flour, ketchup, and water, baked in a boiled pudding basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mix the suet and salt into the flour.

  2. Add just enough water to form a stiff paste.

Line and fill the basin

  1. Grease a pudding basin with lard or butter.

  2. Line the basin with a thin crust of the paste, leaving space at the bottom.

  3. Cut the steaks into pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Place a fatty piece at the bottom, followed by lean pieces.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of ketchup and ¼ pint of lukewarm water.

  6. Top with the remaining seasoned steaks and cover with the rest of the paste.

Boil and serve

  1. Seal the edges well and tie a clean, floured cloth over it.

  2. Place in a boiling saucepan, ensuring it is covered with water.

  3. Boil gently for about 3 hours.

  4. Remove from the water, take off the cloth, and turn out onto a dish to serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the stiff paste that encloses the filling and holds its shape while boiling.
Suet
Adds fat to the paste, keeping it tender and moist as it cooks.
Beef steaks
Provide the meat filling, with fattier pieces adding moisture and richness as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil gently with the basin fully covered by water. If the water boils hard or the pudding is not fully submerged, the paste can crack or dry out and the water can enter the basin. A gentle, steady simmer cooks the meat slowly and keeps the crust intact.

“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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