Skip to main content
Main

Lark Pie

A savory pie with larks, veal, ham, mushrooms, and sauce baked under puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lark Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the veal and ham scallops until browned.

  3. Add mushrooms, parsley, onion, bay leaf, thyme, cayenne, salt, lemon juice, mushroom ketchup, and gravy to the pan. Boil the mixture for 3 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the veal and ham scallops in the bottom of a dish. Arrange the larks closely on top of the scallops.

  2. Pour the sauce over the larks and place mushrooms in the center. Cover the dish with puff pastry.

  3. Bake for 1 hour and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Larks
Form the main meat layer, providing the core flavour of the pie.
Veal cutlets
Provide the bulk of the meat, becoming tender during the long bake in the sauce.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the meat layer.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Rich gravy
Supplies liquid and body to the sauce, keeping the meat moist.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky crust that rises and browns over the filling.

The step that matters

Browning the veal and ham. Frying the scallops until browned builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat will taste flat, and the surface must be dry and hot enough to brown rather than steam.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, scallop, ham, butter, mushroom, parsley, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, scallop, ham, butter, mushroom, parsley, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCheese ScallopCheese Scallop19 recipes