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Boiled Meat Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef, mutton kidney, suet, flour, and spices.

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 ↓

Boiled Meat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Chop the suet finely and mix it with flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add cold water to form a stiff paste, then roll it out to a round piece about ½ inch thick.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease a 1‑pint pudding bowl with dripping and line it with the paste, cutting off excess around the edges.

  2. Slice the beef and kidney thinly, season with salt and pepper, and layer them in the bowl.

  3. Cover the meat with the remaining paste, sealing it well, and steam for about 1 hour.

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. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Suet
Melts during steaming to make the crust rich, tender and moist.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that gives the crust its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste, lightening the crust as it steams.
Lean beef
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender as it steams.
Mutton kidney
Adds rich, savoury flavour and depth to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding before steaming. If the paste cover is not sealed well around the edges, steam and juices can escape or water can enter during cooking, leaving the filling dry or soggy. A tight seal keeps the moisture in so the meat cooks gently in its own juices.

“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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