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Stewed Larks

A stew of larks cooked with bacon fat, herbs, bread, pepper, salt, and flour, served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Larks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Roast the larks slightly with a piece of bacon fat over each.

  2. Remove the meat from 6 larks and pound it in a mortar.

  3. Add savoury herbs, soaked bread, pepper, and salt to the pounded meat.

  4. Stuff the remaining 18 larks with the mixture.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the stuffed larks in a stewpan with the roasting gravy.

  2. Sprinkle with flour, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew gently and serve on fried pieces of bread, pouring the sauce over.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Larks
Provide the main meat, which is partly pounded into the stuffing and partly stuffed whole.
Bacon fat
Adds richness and moisture to the larks as they roast.
Bread soaked in milk
Binds the pounded meat into a moist stuffing.
Flour
Sprinkled over the larks so it thickens the gravy as they stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently. Gentle heat keeps the small birds tender and stops the flour-thickened gravy from scorching or turning lumpy. Vigorous boiling toughens the meat and can break the sauce.

“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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