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Beef Steak Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef steak strips, suet pastry, 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 ↓

Beef Steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a deep basin and line it with suet pastry, rolled to ½ inch thick.

  2. On a plate, mix the flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cut the beef into strips 2½ inches long and 1 inch wide, and the fat into very small pieces.

Fill and seal

  1. Roll each piece of meat in the seasoned flour, placing a small piece of fat at the end of each piece, and roll it up tightly.

  2. Place the rolled meat in the basin and pour the water over them, filling the basin nearly full.

  3. Wet the edges of the pastry and cover with a round piece of pastry, sealing the edges well.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Turn out and serve.

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
Forms the main body of the filling, becoming tender during long, moist steaming.
Suet pastry
Encloses the filling and forms a sturdy crust that holds its shape during steaming.
Flour
Dusted onto the meat, it helps thicken the juices into a light gravy.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry lid. If the edges are not wetted and pressed firmly, steam can force the lid open or juices can leak out during the long steaming. A tight seal keeps the filling moist and the pudding intact.

“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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