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Beefsteak Pudding

A savory pudding made with steak, beef marrow, flour, and a crust, boiled for hours and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Make a crust with the flour, beef marrow, a pinch of coarse sea salt, and baking powder.

  2. Roll the crust out to ⅓ inch thick and line a basin with it.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the basin with the seasoned steak and add a little water.

  2. Cover with a round of crust, tie the pudding up, and boil for 3 hours.

Make and serve the gravy

  1. Prepare gravy by mixing boiling water with gravy mix and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Pour the gravy into the pudding after cutting a round from the top.

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 + 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust that holds the filling together.
Beef marrow
Adds fat to the crust, keeping it tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the crust rise and lighten.
Steak
Provides the main meaty filling that cooks slowly in the steamed crust.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding up and boiling for 3 hours. The basin must be sealed tightly so steam cooks the pudding evenly without water getting in. If it leaks, the filling becomes soggy and the crust can turn heavy.

“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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