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Beefsteak Pudding

A boiled meat pudding made with beef steak, flour, and suet, wrapped in cloth and cooked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Rub the beef dripping, lard, or suet into the flour with the salt.

  2. Make a stiff paste with as little water as possible.

  3. Roll it out moderately thin.

Fill and wrap

  1. Scald a pudding cloth.

  2. Lay it over a basin, pressing it down.

  3. Flour the cloth well.

  4. Lay the crust over it.

  5. Cut the steak into 1-inch dice.

  6. Season with pepper and salt.

  7. Place it in the crust.

  8. Pour in a teacup of water.

  9. Moisten the edges of the crust.

  10. Gather it to the center.

  11. Pinch it tightly.

  12. Tie the cloth securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Place it in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Turn it out onto a dish.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff paste that becomes the sturdy outer crust holding the filling.
Beef dripping, lard, or suet
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and richness to the crust.
Round steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender during the long boil.

The step that matters

Pinch the crust closed and tie the cloth securely. If the seal or cloth is loose, water enters the pudding and dilutes the filling, and the crust can split during the long boil.

“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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