By Lark Pie
Make a stuffing of bread-crumbs, parsley, lemon-peel, and the yolk of an egg; roll the larks (Ed. note: larks may also have meant meadow larks) in flour and stuff them. Line the bottom of a pie-dish with a few slices of beef and bacon; over these place the larks, and season with salt, pepper, minced parsley and chopped chalots (Ed. note: probably shallots). Pour in the stock or water, cover with a crust, and bake for an hour; serve quickly, as it must be hot.
Sweet Omelet
6 eggs, 1 tablespoon flour, a little sugar, nutmeg, preserves. Beat the eggs very light, add the flour, sugar, and a little nutmeg; put this into an omelet-pan, stir till it sets; lossen the edge with a knife, spread over it with a spoon any kind of perserves; roll it up quickly and slip on to the serving-dish; sift on a little fine sugar.
Don,
How are you?
Not to clear about this recipe?
Roll the larks in what? Do they need plucking? (like a chicken?)
Do you remove the beaks? and what about the feet?
How many larks make a pie? (4 and 20?)
Is there any difference in taste between larks and meadow larks? How do you catch these larks? (would a shotgun be a bit messy?)
Is this a serious recipe, or are you larking about?
Tony, the only question I can answer accurately is that I'm not having a lark. This is an actual recipe from an American cookbook that was published in 1881.
I expect the techniques you question were so common in the 19th century that most home cooks knew what to do.
As an aside, I remember reading an assertion by either Peter Hathaway Capstick or Robert Ruark, that just about any bird, including robins, bluejays, starlings, etc., is good eats if you prepare and cook it immediately after dispatching it. It was something they discovered in their boyhood.
Maybe you'll look differently at those bird platforms you've been building? Might save you a little on the old butcher bill?
(Look at Midge as she reads this, and tell me if her face is coloring.)
Isn't a Lark a tree? I think I saw a Monty Python skit about them once...
Monty Python may well have done a skit about a lark tree. In fact, it sounds like something they would do.
I know for sure that there is a 'larch' tree (http://www.2020site.org/trees/larch.html)
So a lark could fly in an arc through arches of larches...I think.