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Ruth Pinch's Beef-Steak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef steak, flour, suet, salt, pepper, egg yolks, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Ruth Pinch's Beef-Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mix flour and suet (or butter) with salt.

  2. Moisten the paste with well-beaten egg yolks or whole eggs mixed with a little water.

Fill the basin

  1. Butter a basin thickly before laying in the paste.

  2. Fill the basin with the prepared mixture.

Steam

  1. Cover and steam 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 paste that encloses the filling.
Suet or butter
Fat that keeps the paste tender and rich as it cooks.
Egg yolks or whole eggs
Bind the paste together and add richness and tenderness.
Rump steak
Main filling that cooks slowly in the steam until tender.

The step that matters

Cover and steam for 3½ hours. The basin must be sealed well so water cannot enter and the steam stays at a steady heat. Steady, gentle steaming cooks the meat through slowly and keeps the pastry moist rather than soggy or dry.

“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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