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Beef Budding

A boiled pudding made with beef, pastry dough, onions, and water.

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

Beef Budding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the steak into three lengthwise pieces, then slice slantwise every inch.

  2. Remove sinew and excess fat if using butcher cuttings.

  3. Sprinkle the meat with salt, pepper, flour, and chopped onions; mix well.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Roll out the pastry dough to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Place a pudding cloth in a basin and sprinkle with flour.

  3. Lay the pastry in the cloth, add the meat and pieces of fat.

  4. Pour in the water, fold the pastry over the meat, and tie the cloth loosely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in 4 quarts of water for 1 hour.

  2. Let it cool for a few minutes, then cut the string 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. 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. Pepper + flourtop 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

Steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long boiling.
Pastry dough
Encloses the meat and forms the outer wrapper of the pudding.
Flour
Lightly coats the meat and dusts the cloth, helping keep the pudding from sticking.
Fat
Adds richness and moisture to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth loosely. The pudding swells and the pastry expands as it cooks, so a tight tie can trap pressure and split the wrapper, while a loose tie lets it expand safely.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. 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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