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Beef Steak and Lark Pudding

A pudding made with larks and beef steaks, seasoned with pepper and salt, baked in a mould and finished with glaze and stock.

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 ↓

Beef Steak and Lark Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

  1. Butter and flour the lid and the mould.

  2. Line the mould with short paste.

Fill the pudding

  1. Layer larks at the bottom, then add beef steaks.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then add another layer of larks and steaks until the mould is full.

  3. Add 2 ounces of glaze.

  4. Cover the pudding with paste and shut the cover.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Turn it out onto a dish, cut a round piece from the top, and add a little good stock.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Short paste
Forms the lining and crust that encloses the filling as it cooks.
Beef steaks
Provide the main meaty filling that becomes tender during the long boil.
Larks
Add the rich, gamey meat layered through the pudding.
Glaze
Adds sweetness and shine to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. The pudding is cooked in a sealed mould, so it needs a steady, gentle boil for the full time. Too little time leaves the beef tough and the paste underdone, and the boil must keep the water level up around the mould.

“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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