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Beef-steak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef steak, potatoes, onions, and mushroom ketchup, wrapped in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the rump steaks with a chopper.

  2. Cut the beaten steaks into pieces about half the size of your hand.

  3. Grease a basin or oval mold with butter.

  4. Line the greased mold with pastry as directed for boiled puddings.

  5. Season the steak pieces with salt, pepper, and a little grated nutmeg.

Assemble

  1. Layer the steak and potato slices in the mold.

  2. Add some chopped onion between the layers.

  3. Add ½ cup of mushroom ketchup, 1 tablespoon of lemon pickle, and ½ cup of water or veal broth.

  4. Roll out a top pastry.

  5. Seal the pastry well to prevent water from entering.

Boil and serve

  1. Rinse a clean cloth in hot water.

  2. Sprinkle a little flour over the rinsed cloth.

  3. Tie the cloth around the pudding.

  4. Boil a large pot of water.

  5. Place the pudding in the boiling water and cook for 2.5 hours.

  6. Remove the pudding from the pot.

  7. Take off the cloth.

  8. Turn the pudding out onto a deep 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rump steaks
Provide the meat that becomes tender and savory during long, moist boiling.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, soaking up the meat juices and liquid in the pudding.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the meat and liquid.
Water or veal broth
Supplies moisture so the filling steams and cooks through in the crust.
Pastry (in the method)
Encloses the filling, sealing in moisture and juices during boiling.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry well. A tight seal keeps boiling water out of the filling, so the meat and liquid stay inside and the pudding cooks in its own juices rather than becoming waterlogged.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, pepper, nutmeg, mushroom, ketchup, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, nutmeg, mushroom, ketchup, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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