Fried Larks

Ingredients

• about three dozen Larks
• chopped onions
• mushrooms
• butter
• fine herbs
• forcemeat
• a round of the paste

Method

1. 1

   Cook Larks with onions and mushrooms in butter.

2. 2

   Prepare forcemeat with entrails and herbs.

3. 3

   Layer Larks and forcemeat in a lined dish, pour over butter, cover, and bake for 1.5 hours.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The encyclopaedia of practical cookery (1892) by Theodore Francis Garrett, William A. Rawson, page 267. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

forcemeat at the bottom of each mould, place the Larks in them, spread another thin layer of forcemeat on the top, cover the patties with short-paste, pinching the edges to make them stick, egg the tops, then put a round of puff paste on each. The rounds should be cut with a ljin. fluted cutter. Egg the tops, put the patties in a hot oven, and bake for twenty minutes. When cooked, cut off the covers, and pour in 1 table- spoonful of Spanish sauce reduced with a little essence of Larks, put the covers on again, and serve. (2) Having - boned seven Larks (the heads should be preserved), stuff them with forcemeat ; make them round, and tie up in a piece of buttered paper to keep them in shape ; braise with very little moisture, and let them cool ; then take off the papers, trim, glaze them, using a paste- brush, then coat with a thin layer of aspic jelly. Butter seven small channelled pie-moulds, line them with short- paste, fill with flour, and bake. When done, take them out of the moulds, turn out the flour, and let them cool. Line the inside of the crusts with a puree of cooked livers moistened with a little chaudfroid sauce, half fill them with chopped aspic jelly, put a Lark in each crust, fix the heads on, previously cooked and glazed, place a folded napkin on a dish, stand the patties on it, and serve. Larks in the shape of Pears. — Singe the Larks and bone them, with the exception of one leg on each, which must be left ; dust over inwardly with salt and pepper, put the entrails of the birds and a sufficient quantity of calf’s liver to stuff them with in a frying-pan with a lump of lard and 1 table-spoonful of finely-chopped onion, and fry. When cooked, chop, put them in a mortar with half the quantity of chopped fresh bacon, and pound well. Season the pounded mixture with salt, pepper, and powdered sweet herbs, and mix with it 2 or 3 table-spoonfuls of chopped truffles. Stuff the birds with this mixture, rolling them up in the shape of pears, and passing the leg through the skin to form the stem, and sew up securely. Wrap each bird separately in a thin slice of bacon, lay them side by side in a stewpan, moisten with stock and white wine, in equal quantities, and cook gently over a slow fire until the moisture has somewhat reduced. When cooked, leave the Larks in the stewpan until cold, then take them out of the bacon and trim nicely. Prepare a frying-batter ; put a good-sized lump of lard in a stewpan and place it on the fire ; dip the birds hi the batter, giving them a good covering, put them in the boiling lard, and fry until browned. When taken out of the fat, lay the birds on a sheet of kitchen-paper near the fire to drain for a minute or two, spread a folded napkin or a fancy-edged dish-paper over a hot dish, and arrange the birds in a pyramid upon it, making the pointed ends stick outwards ; garnish with fried parsley, and serve. Lark Pie. — (1) Singe a couple of dozen Larks if for a large Larks — continued. pie, less in proportion for a smaller pie. Cut off the necks and claws, and take out the gizzards ; put them in a frying-pan with two or three slices of streaky bacon and a small piece of butter, and fry over a sharp fire for nine or ten minutes. Line the bottom of a pie-dish with a few thin slices of veal or beef, drain the Larks and put them in it, pour a little gravy in the pan in which the Larks were cooked, thicken it with a little kneaded butter, stir over the fire for five or six minutes, then pour it over the birds. Moisten the edges of the ine-dish when the Larks are cool, put a strip of puff paste round it, roll out a thin round of puff paste, cover the pie with it, pinching it at the edges. Make a small hole in the top, and fix some leaves imitated in pastry round it ; bake the pie in a moderate oven for an-liour-and-a-half, covering it with paper after the first quarter-of-an-hour. When ready to serve, stand the pie-dish on another dish. (2) Butter a pie-dish, and line the edges with puff paste. Pick, and stuff about one dozen Larks with a mixture com- posed of 1 breakfast-cupful of grated breadcrumb, the finely- chopped peel of half a lemon, a little chopped parsley, pepper and salt, and moistened with one beaten egg. Lay at the bottom of the pie-dish 4lb. of beef and pb. of bacon cut in thin slices, and sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them; put the stuffed Larks on the top, sprinkle with more pepper, salt, and a little chopped parsley, and pour in 1 breakfast-cupful of stock. Make a cover with some puff paste rolled out thin, place it over the pie, fastening down at the edges by moistening it a little. Put the pie in a moderate oven, and bake for an hour. Serve either hot or cold. (3) Soak a slice of stale bread in a teacupful of milk ; then beat it up, add some sweet herbs and half the peel of a lemon, all finely minced, season with pepper and salt, add a piece of butter, and mix all well together with the hard-boiled whites of six eggs ; put it in a saucepan, and stir over the fire till very stiff. Pick and clean twelve small Larks, and stuff them with the prepared forcemeat. Line the edges of a buttered pie-dish with some puff paste ; lightly fry a piece of rump steak, season it with salt and pepper, put it at the bottom of the dish, place the Larks on it, cover them with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs cut in slices, and moisten with a little rich gravy ; cover the pie with puff paste, damping a little at the edges to make it stick, make a hole in the top, then dip a paste-brush in beaten yolk of egg, brush over the pie, and bake it in a moderate oven for an-liour-and-a-half. Serve either hot or cold. (4) Pluck, draw, and singe about three dozen Larks, put them into a frying-pan with chopped onions and mush- rooms, and cook in butter. Let them cool without re- moving from the pan, take them out, and with their entrails and fine herbs prepare a forcemeat, seasoning to taste. Have ready a mould or dish lined with paste, mask it with the forcemeat, over this put one-third of the Larks, cover with more rich forcemeat, and continue in this way until the pie is full. Pour over the butter in which the Larks were cooked, cover with a round of the paste

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.