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To Stew Larks

A stew of larks cooked with butter, flour, truffles, pepper, salt, sherry or Madeira, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

To Stew Larks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the larks

  1. Pluck and clean the larks.

  2. Open them up the back and flatten them.

Brown and stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter with flour.

  2. Toss the larks over the fire until browned.

  3. Add the sliced truffles, pepper, salt, sherry or Madeira, and soy sauce.

  4. Let the mixture stew gently for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in the gravy with sippets.

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. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Truffle + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 browns and becomes tender as it stews.
Butter
Carries browning and adds richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a gravy.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that flavours the stewing liquid.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and sweetness that deepen the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the larks. Tossing the larks over the fire until browned creates flavourful Maillard browning on the surface. Pale, under-browned birds give a flat gravy, so they should colour well before the liquid goes in.

“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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