Skip to main content
Main

Alouettes a LA Casserole

Stuffed larks baked with bacon, buttered paper, and a truffle-liver mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Alouettes a LA Casserole

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. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the larks. Cook until half done.

  2. Remove the larks and discard their gizzards. Keep the rest of the insides.

  3. In a mortar, combine the insides, chicken livers, truffle, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Beat until well mixed.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the larks with the mixture and place them in a fireproof dish.

  2. Cover the larks with slices of bacon and a piece of buttered paper.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the paper and bacon, arrange on a hot dish, and sprinkle with fine bread crumbs before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 cooked briefly and then finished in the oven.
Chicken livers
Add richness and a soft, moist texture to the filling.
Truffle
Adds a strong, earthy aroma to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and flavour when the larks are first cooked.
Fat bacon
Covers the birds, adding fat that bastes them and flavours the meat as it bakes.
Fine bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top at the end to add a light, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Cook the larks until half done before stuffing. Partly cooking the birds first lets them finish in the oven without overcooking. Stopping at the right point keeps the meat tender and moist rather than dry and tough.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, liver, truffle, pepper, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, liver, truffle, pepper, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes