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Beef-steak, Oh, John Bull’s Pudding

A suet crust pudding filled with layers of seasoned rump steak and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef-steak, Oh, John Bull’s Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Roll out a suet crust to ½ inch thick.

  2. Line a quart basin with the crust, raising it 1½ to 2 inches above the edge.

Fill and cover

  1. Fill with layers of trimmed rump steak, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour in cold water to create gravy.

  3. Roll out a cover for the pudding, moisten the edges, and press them together with the crust.

  4. Tie a cloth, dipped in hot water and floured, over the pudding.

Cook and serve

  1. Place in boiling water and cook for 3 to 5 hours, depending on size.

  2. After cooking, pierce the crust with a fork to prevent bursting and remove the cloth.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 suet crust that holds the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the crust, making it tender.
Rump steak
Provides the meat filling that becomes tender during long gentle cooking.
Cold water
Creates gravy in the basin as the filling cooks.

The step that matters

Piercing the crust after cooking. Steam builds up inside the sealed pudding as it cooks, and piercing the crust with a fork lets it escape so the crust does not burst.

“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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