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Boiled Meat Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef, kidney, suet, and flour, wrapped in a pastry-like paste and cooked for 2.5 hours.

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

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Chop suet finely and mix it into the flour, rubbing it in with your fingers.

  3. Add cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Flour a surface and roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick.

  5. Grease a 1‑pint pudding bowl with dripping and line it with the paste, trimming the edges.

Fill and seal

  1. Mix flour, salt, and pepper for seasoning on a plate.

  2. Slice the beef thinly, season, and layer it in the bowl.

  3. Split and slice the kidney, season, and add it to the bowl with the beef.

  4. Pour in 1 teacup of water for gravy.

  5. Wet the edges of the paste, roll out scraps to cover the dish, and press down the edges.

  6. Sprinkle a little flour on top, then cover tightly with a pudding cloth dipped in boiling water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in plenty of water for 2.5 hours.

  2. Remove the cloth and turn the pudding out onto a dish.

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

Lean beef
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the filling.
Sheep's kidney
Adds a rich, strongly flavoured meat to the filling.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that builds the pudding's structure and crust.
Suet
Its fat, rubbed into the flour, makes the crust tender and rich.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the crust rise and lighten as it cooks.

The step that matters

Seal the pudding cloth tightly before boiling. A loose cloth lets boiling water seep into the bowl and dilute the filling, while a tight seal keeps the steamed pudding moist and well flavoured during the long cook.

“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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