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Steamed Meat Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef, flour, suet, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steamed Meat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a pan of boiling water for steaming the pudding.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper on a plate.

  3. Cut the meat into narrow strips and dip each piece into the seasoning.

  4. Roll each piece with a piece of fat inside.

  5. Grease a half-pint basin.

  6. Shred and finely chop the suet, removing the skin.

Make the paste

  1. Mix the suet with the flour and salt, then work it into a stiff paste with cold water.

  2. Roll out the paste to about twice the size of the greased basin and lay it inside without stretching.

  3. Trim off the excess paste from the edges and fill the basin with the seasoned meat.

  4. Half-fill the basin with cold water, wet the edges of the paste, and cover with a round piece of the remaining paste.

  5. Press the edges together, cover with greased paper, and steam for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Serve

  1. When done, turn it out onto a hot 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef skirting
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender and flavourful during long steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste and filling moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that encloses the filling and holds its shape while steaming.

The step that matters

Press the edges together and cover with greased paper. A tight seal keeps steam and moisture inside the basin during the long steaming, so the filling cooks through without drying out. The greased paper lets the pudding expand without sticking to its cover.

“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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