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Larks, Roasted

Roasted larks served on toast with bacon, fried bread crumbs, lemon, watercress, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Larks, Roasted

serves 6

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and singe the larks, cut off the feet, and remove the gizzards.

  2. Truss the larks with a skewer, ensuring it can hold six.

Roast

  1. Brush the larks with hot butter or fat and cover each breast with a slice of bacon.

  2. Roast the larks before a hot fire for about 10 minutes, basting constantly.

Serve

  1. Place each lark on a piece of toast and arrange them in a circle on a hot dish.

  2. Fill the center with fried bread crumbs and garnish with cut lemon and watercress seasoned with salad oil, salt, and pepper.

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. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 cooks quickly and stays moist under bacon and basting.
Bacon
Covers the breast, adding fat and savory flavor and keeping the lean meat moist as it roasts.
Buttered toast
Soaks up the juices and fat from the roasted larks beneath them.
Butter or fat for basting
Adds fat that promotes browning and carries flavor over the surface of the larks.

The step that matters

Roast the larks before a hot fire, basting constantly. Lean birds dry out quickly at high heat. Frequent basting with fat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly before the meat overcooks.

“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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