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Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beefsteak, kidney, flour, suet, and pastry.

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 ↓

Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak and kidney into pieces about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Season well with pepper and salt, then dredge with a little flour.

  3. Lightly butter a round-bottomed pudding basin.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Roll out pastry to ½ inch thick and line the basin.

  2. Add the beef and kidney to the basin and pour in 3-4 tablespoons of water.

  3. Cover with a piece of pastry, pressing it firmly together.

  4. Tie the pudding basin in a floured cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Place it in a saucepan with about 4 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Keep boiling, adding more boiling water as needed.

  3. When cooked, untie the cloth and turn the pudding 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rump steak
Provides the main meat texture, becoming tender during long, moist cooking.
Beef kidney
Adds rich, savoury flavour and a firmer, meaty texture to the filling.
Flour
Light coating on the meat that helps thicken the juices into a gravy.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry rich and the filling moist during cooking.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling and topped up. Steaming in boiling water cooks the pudding gently and evenly. If the water drops and stops boiling, the pastry and meat cook unevenly and the pudding can turn heavy or undercooked.

“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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