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Beef Pudding

A baked beef and breadcrumb mixture with herbs, butter, and eggs, served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Trim the fat from the beef and shred it finely.

  2. Mix the beef with the bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, butter, gravy or cream, pepper, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, salt, and eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Melt a little butter in a deep dish, pour in the mixture, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Turn it out and serve with brown gravy in a tureen.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a meaty body and savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on baking, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the pudding hold together with a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavour and a moist crumb.

The step that matters

Bake the mixture in a deep dish. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding needs the full baking time at the stated temperature to become firm. Underbaking leaves it loose and wet in the centre, while overbaking can make the eggs rubbery and dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, parsley, thyme, butter, cream, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, parsley, thyme, butter, cream, pepper. 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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