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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled pudding made with sliced beefsteak, suet paste, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beefsteak into thin slices, about 3 inches long and wide.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper on a plate, then dip each slice of meat in the mixture.

  3. Roll out the suet paste to fit a well-greased basin, reserving about ¼ for the lid.

Assemble and cook

  1. Line the basin with the paste, add the meat, and sprinkle the remaining seasoning between layers.

  2. Leave spaces for water to prevent the pudding from becoming too dry.

  3. Fill the basin three‑quarters full with boiling water, cover, and seal the edges.

  4. If boiling, tie a scalded and floured pudding cloth over it; if steaming, cover with greased paper.

  5. Ensure the water is boiling, then cook the pudding for 3.5 hours by boiling or 4 hours by steaming.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the savoury meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Suet paste
Forms the enclosing crust that holds the filling and absorbs meat juices.
Flour
Coats the meat slices, helping to thicken the juices around them.

The step that matters

Leave spaces for water in the basin. Without gaps for water, the filling can dry out during the long cook, so the pudding needs room for moisture to circulate and keep the meat juicy.

“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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