Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Beef-steak Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Butter the inside of a small clean basin.
Lay the cold pudding in the basin.
Tie a cloth over the top and place a plate on it.
Steam and serve
Put the basin in a stewpan filled one-third with boiling water.
Cover the pan and steam the pudding until hot, about 1 hour.
Serve on a hot dish with fresh gravy if available.
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.
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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