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Beef Steak Pudding

A boiled pudding made from beef steak, flour, suet, 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef steak into pieces 1 inch wide and 3 inches long.

  2. Season the steak with pepper and salt.

  3. In a bowl, mix flour with dripping or suet and enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Roll out the paste.

  5. Grease a basin with dripping.

Assemble

  1. Line the basin with the paste, pressing it flat where it folds over.

  2. Place the seasoned steak in the basin.

  3. Add ½ cup of water.

  4. Cover with a small round piece of paste. Press to seal.

  5. Tie a cloth over the basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the basin in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3½ hours if using dripping, or 4 hours if using suet.

  3. Carefully loosen the edge with a knife. Turn out the pudding.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + flourtop 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
Provides the savoury meat filling that becomes tender during long, gentle steaming.
All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff paste that encases the filling and holds its shape while steaming.
Dripping or suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste rich and the filling moist during long steaming.

The step that matters

Keeping the basin sealed and the water boiling. The cloth and sealed paste lid trap steam so the pudding cooks evenly. If the water stops boiling or the seal leaks, the pudding can turn out wet or undercooked, so the water level and boil must be maintained for the full steaming time.

“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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