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Beef-steak, or John Bull’s Pudding

A pudding made by encasing a trimmed rump steak in suet crust and boiling it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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, or John Bull’s Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Roll out the suet crust to ½ inch thick.

  2. Line a quart basin with the crust, raising it 1½ to 2 inches above the edge.

Fill and seal

  1. Layer the trimmed rump steak in the basin, seasoning with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Pour in enough cold water to create gravy.

  3. Roll out a cover for the pudding, moisten the edges, and press them together with the crust.

  4. Tie a cloth, dipped in hot water and floured, over the pudding.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the pudding in boiling water and cook for 3 to 5 hours, depending on size.

  2. After cooking, pierce the crust with a fork to prevent bursting and remove the cloth.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 structure of the suet crust that holds the filling together.
Suet
Adds fat to the crust, keeping it tender and rich as it steams.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the crust, contributing tenderness and richness.
Rump steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking in the steam.

The step that matters

Sealing and cooking the pudding in boiling water. The cloth and crust must be sealed well so water cannot enter, and the pudding must stay at a steady boil for hours. Piercing the crust after cooking releases steam that would otherwise build up and burst it.

“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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