Skip to main content
Main

Beef-steak Pudding

A suet and flour pudding filled with seasoned beef steaks and ketchup, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Mix the suet and salt into the flour.

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

  3. Grease the inside of a pudding basin with lard or butter.

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

Fill and seal

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

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

  3. Pour in the ketchup and warm water when half full.

  4. Add the remaining seasoned steaks and cover with the rest of the paste.

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

Boil and serve

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

  2. Boil gently for about three hours.

  3. Remove from the pot, take off the cloth, and turn it out onto a dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Ketchup + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 makes the crust holding the filling together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich during long steaming.
Steaks (in the method)
Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavourful during long gentle boiling.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that season the meat and its cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the pudding covered with water while boiling. If the water drops below the cloth, the top of the pudding is exposed and dries out or cooks unevenly. Keeping it fully submerged while boiling gently gives steady, even heat through the crust and filling.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes