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Beef-steak Pudding

A pudding made by layering beef steak pieces with a suet and flour paste, boiled for about three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and ketchup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,435 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Mix the suet and salt into the flour.

  2. Add just enough water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Grease a pudding basin with lard or butter.

  4. Line the basin with a thin layer of the paste, leaving space at the bottom.

Fill and seal

  1. Cut the steaks into pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Place a fatty piece of steak at the bottom, followed by lean pieces.

  3. Add the ketchup and lukewarm water when half full.

  4. Top with the remaining seasoned steaks and cover with the rest of the paste.

  5. Seal the edges well and tie a clean, floured cloth over it.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the pudding in a boiling saucepan, ensuring it is covered with water.

  2. Boil gently for about three hours.

  3. Remove the cloth, turn the pudding out onto a dish, and serve.

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 + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff paste that encloses the filling and holds its shape while boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust rich and tender as it cooks.
Steak (in the method)
Provides the meat filling, with fatty pieces at the bottom to enrich the juices.
Ketchup
Adds tang and sweetness to the meat and its cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Seal the edges well and keep the pudding covered with water. A poor seal lets water seep into the filling and makes the crust soggy, while steaming in water that drops below the cloth can dry or scorch the crust. Keeping the pudding submerged and the seal tight holds steam and moisture in the filling.

“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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