Why it works: Beef and tea work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 417 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓
Beef Tea Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mixture
Soak the breadcrumbs in beef tea for 10 minutes.
Beat the soaked breadcrumbs well with a fork.
Add the well-beaten egg and mix thoroughly.
Grease a small basin with butter and pour in the mixture.
Steam
Cover with buttered paper and place the basin in a pan of boiling water.
Ensure the water comes halfway up the basin and steam for 20 minutes.
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 + teatop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together417 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Tea + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together703 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Breadcrumbs
- Absorb the beef tea and give the pudding its soft body.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture and sets with gentle heat to give a firm, tender texture.
- Beef tea
- Supplies the liquid that moistens the breadcrumbs and flavours the pudding.
- Butter
- Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.
The step that matters
Setting the water level in the steaming pan. The pudding cooks by gentle steam. Water should reach only halfway up the basin, because higher water can seep under the paper and into the pudding. Egg proteins set best with moderate, steady heat, so the water must stay gently boiling for the full 20 minutes.
“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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