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Beef Steak and Lark Pudding

A pastry-lined pudding made with layers of lark and beef steak, seasoned with pepper and salt, finished with glaze.

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 ↓

Beef Steak and Lark Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter and flour the mold and the lid.

Layer and seal

  1. Layer larks at the bottom of the mold.

  2. Add a layer of beef steaks and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Repeat layering with larks and beef steaks until the mold is full.

  4. Add about 2 ounces of glaze.

  5. Cover with pastry and seal the lid.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out onto a dish, cut a round piece from the top, and add a little 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 pastry
Forms a sealed crust that encloses the filling and holds in moisture while it cooks.
Beef steaks
Provide the main meat filling, becoming tender through long, slow moist cooking.
Larks
Form the other main layered filling, adding rich meaty flavor to the pudding.
Glaze
Adds sheen and concentrated savory flavor to the filling layers.

The step that matters

Seal the lid. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the mold during the long boil, so the meat cooks in its own moisture rather than drying out or leaking.

“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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