Pudding's starter before final dish (7)
I believe the answer is:
platter
'dish' is the definition.
(platter is a kind of dish)
'pudding's starter before final' is the wordplay.
'pudding's starter' becomes 'p' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'before' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'final' becomes 'latter'.
'p'+'latter'='PLATTER'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for platter that I've seen before include "pop record" , "Salver" , "main course" , "Shallow serving dish" , "Large flat serving dish" .)