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Small Beef-steak Pudding

A steamed pudding made from chopped beef steak, suet, flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Chop the beef steak into small pieces.

  2. Mix the chopped beef with suet, flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add enough water to form a dough.

Assemble and cook

  1. Roll out the dough and line a pudding basin.

  2. Fill the basin with the beef mixture and cover with more dough.

  3. Steam for several hours until cooked through.

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. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour 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

Beef steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the dough its structure.

The step that matters

Steam for several hours until cooked through. Steaming gently heats the pudding without drying it out, but it needs a long time for tough beef to become tender. Check that the meat is cooked through rather than judging by time alone, since thick puddings cook unevenly at the centre.

“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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