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Small Beef-steak Pudding

A pudding made with a crust of flour, suet, and water, encasing seasoned beef steak, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Small Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a firm, smooth paste with flour, suet, salt, and cold water.

  2. Line a basin that holds 1½ pints with the paste.

Fill and cover

  1. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then lay it in the crust.

  2. Pour in ¼ pint of water.

  3. Roll out the cover, close the pudding carefully, and tie a floured cloth over it.

Cook

  1. Boil for 3½ 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef 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 firm paste that holds the crust together while it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust and filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Tender steak
Provides the main filling, cooking through gently in the steam of the pudding.

The step that matters

Close the pudding carefully. A tight seal keeps boiling water out of the basin, so the filling stays moist and the crust does not turn soggy during the long boil.

“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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