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Beef Steak and Lark Pudding

A pudding made with larks, beef steaks, short paste, pepper, salt, glaze, and good 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 mould and lid.

Layer the filling

  1. Layer larks at the bottom of the mould.

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

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

  4. Add about 2 ounces of glaze.

  5. Cover with paste and shut the lid.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for two hours.

  2. Turn out onto a dish.

  3. Cut a piece from the top.

  4. 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 enclosing crust that holds the filling together while it cooks.
Larks
Provide the main savoury filling layered through the pudding.
Beef steaks
Add meaty body and richness between the layers of larks.
Glaze
Adds sweetness and gloss to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil for two hours. Boiling must be steady and long enough to cook the dense beef and larks through and tenderise the meat. Too little time leaves the meat tough and the centre underdone.

“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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