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Beefsteak Pudding or Pot-pie

A boiled pot pie made with beefsteak, onions, catsup, flour, and water, encased in a pastry-like paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding or Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the beefsteak until almost a pulp, then shape it into pieces 2 by 5 inches.

  2. Season the beef with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the beef with flour.

Make the crust

  1. Butter a 1-quart tin mold or a china bowl.

  2. Make a meat-pie paste (see recipes for Suet, Potato, or Good Plain Paste).

  3. Line the mold with the paste, letting it hang over the edge.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place the beef in the mold with the onions, catsup, and water.

  2. Wet the edges of the paste.

  3. Cover with more paste.

  4. Seal the edges tightly.

  5. Tie the mold in a clean cloth.

  6. Boil a pot of water.

  7. Place the mold in the boiling water, top side up, and cook for 4 hours.

  8. Turn the cooked pie out of the water and serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Beefsteak
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Dredging the beef helps thicken the juices and gives the filling body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the filling.
Paste
Forms the enclosing pastry that holds the filling and its juices while it steams.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges tightly. A poor seal lets steam and juices escape during the long boil, so the filling can dry out or leak into the water.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, mushroom. 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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