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Larks a LA Franc a is E

Larks à la Française is a stew of larks cooked with bacon, chicken consommé, parsley, chives, sugar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,150 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and clean the larks, leaving the livers in.

  2. Cut off the heads, wing-bones, and feet just below the second joint.

  3. Tie a piece of fat bacon over each lark.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the larks in a stewpan with the Chicken Consomme.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, chives, and white sugar.

  3. Let them stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Add coarse sea salt to taste and serve with the sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + chivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Chive + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together467 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chicken + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,461 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Larks
The main meat, cooked whole so it stays moist during stewing.
Fat bacon
Wrapped over each lark, it bastes the meat with fat as it cooks.
Chicken consomme
Liquid that gently cooks the larks and forms the sauce served with them.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury stew and sauce.

The step that matters

Let them stew for 15 minutes. Stewing gently in liquid keeps the small birds tender; boiling hard toughens the meat and can dry out the sauce. Keep the pot at a low simmer.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, chive, sugar):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  3. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, chive, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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