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Ruth PINCH’s Beef-steak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, butter, salt, water, steak, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Ruth PINCH’s Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with well-beaten egg yolks or whole eggs mixed with a little water.

  3. Butter a basin thickly before laying in the paste.

Assemble and steam

  1. Prepare the steak by seasoning it with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the steak to the mixture and pour in water.

  3. Cover and steam for 3½ hours.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the paste.
Egg yolks
Bind the paste and add richness to its texture.
Rump steak
Provides the meat filling that becomes tender during long steaming.

The step that matters

Cover and steam for 3½ hours. Steaming gently over a long period breaks down the connective tissue in the steak so it turns tender. Keep the water level topped up and the lid sealed so the steam stays in the basin.

“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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