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Beefsteak and Kidney Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 coarse sea salt, then dredge with a little flour.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Lightly butter a round-bottomed pudding basin.

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

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

  4. Cover with a piece of pastry, pressing it firmly together with your thumb.

  5. Tie the pudding basin in a floured cloth.

Cook and serve

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

  2. When cooked, remove it, untie the cloth, and turn the pudding onto a dish.

  3. Carefully remove the basin 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. 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

Rump steak
Provides the main meat texture and savoury beefy flavour in the filling.
Beef kidney
Adds a rich, deeply savoury flavour and firm meaty texture to the filling.
Flour
Dusts the meat so it browns slightly and thickens the juices around it.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and enriches the pastry.

The step that matters

Keeping the water constantly boiling. The pudding cooks through by steam and hot water surrounding the sealed basin. If the water drops off the boil, the cooking slows and the pastry and meat may turn out underdone or heavy.

“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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