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Baked Beef-steak Pudding

A baked pudding made with beef steaks and a batter of milk, eggs, and flour, topped with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Baked Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes through a colander.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, eggs, and flour to make a batter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread a little batter at the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Season the steaks with salt and pepper and place them in the dish.

  3. Pour the remaining batter over the steaks.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.

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. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the batter as it bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter loose and moist.
Potatoes
Add body and moisture to the mixture.
Beef steaks
Provide the main meat and savory flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Pour the remaining batter over the steaks. Pouring the batter gently over the steaks keeps the bottom layer intact, so the batter bakes into an even crust rather than mixing into the meat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, beef, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, beef, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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