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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with sliced beefsteak, flour, salt, pepper, and suet paste, cooked in water for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beefsteak into thin slices, about 3 inches long and wide.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper on a plate, then dip each slice in the mixture.

  3. Prepare the suet paste.

  4. Reserve a quarter of the suet paste for the lid.

  5. Roll out the remaining paste to fit a well-greased basin.

  6. Line the basin with the paste.

Assemble

  1. Add the sliced beefsteak to the basin.

  2. Sprinkle the seasoning between the layers of meat.

  3. Leave spaces for water to prevent the pudding from drying out.

  4. Fill the basin three-quarters full with boiling water.

  5. Cover the pudding.

  6. Moisten the cover.

  7. Seal the edges of the pudding.

  8. Tie a scalded and floured pudding cloth over the pudding if boiling.

  9. Cover the pudding with greased paper if steaming.

Cook

  1. Ensure the water is boiling.

  2. Add the pudding to the boiling water.

  3. Boil for about 3.5 hours or steam for about 4 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat slices, helping the seasoning cling and lightly thickening the juices.
Suet paste
Forms the enclosing crust, whose fat keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.

The step that matters

Ensure the water is boiling. Adding the pudding to water that is not yet boiling slows the rise in temperature, so the meat and crust cook unevenly and can turn heavy. Keeping the water at a steady boil from the start, with the basin three-quarters submerged, gives even, reliable cooking over the long time needed.

“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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