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Steak or Kidney Pudding

A savory pudding made with kidney or steak, suet, flour, milk, and optional onion, boiled in a sealed basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steak or Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using kidney, split and soak it, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Make a paste by mixing suet, flour, and milk; roll it out.

  3. Line a basin with some of the paste.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place the kidney or steak in the basin and cover with more paste, pinching the edges to seal.

  2. Cover with a cloth and boil for a considerable time.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste rich and tender as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Kidney
Provides the main meaty filling that cooks inside the paste.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour forms a workable, pliable dough.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste. Pinching the edges closed traps steam and juices inside during the long boil. A gap lets water seep in, leaving the filling soggy and the paste waterlogged.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, milk. 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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