Home › Entrées › Liver Farce (Half a pint of Stock)
Liver Farce (Half a pint of Stock)
Half a pint of Stock.
A few Vegetables.
Bone the larks and stuff them with liver farce; roll each lark up in a piece of muslin, and braise them in half a pint of stock and a few vegetables.
When cooked press them lightly between two dishes till nearly cold. Dish the larks up on a bed of mashed lentils. Garnish the larks with the sausages thus: braise the sausages in second stock for about half an hour, then glaze them, cut them in slices and glaze again lightly, place one slice on the top of each lark. Put a few finely-shredded vegetables in the centre of the dish, as much white vegetable as possible.
This is an Edwardian entrée built on a bird that can no longer legally be bought, shot or eaten in most of the world. The notes below explain the terms and why the dish belongs on the page rather than on the stove.
- Larks are protectedSkylarks and their relatives are protected across most of Europe under wild bird legislation, and native larks in the United States are covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Killing, selling or possessing them is generally an offence, though a few countries still permit limited taking under derogation. There is effectively no commercial supply.
- The recipe is a fragmentAs printed it heads only "Half a pint of Stock. A few Vegetables" and then calls for larks, liver farce, sausages, lentils and glaze that the heading never lists. It does not stand alone as a set of instructions, which is a further reason to read it rather than cook from it.
- FarceFrom the French farce, forcemeat: here a pounded liver stuffing worked smooth. The theatrical sense of the English word comes from the same Latin root, farcire, to stuff.
- Second stockThe weaker liquor drawn from bones that have already given up one stock. Period professional cookery books distinguish a first stock for sauces and consomm ing and a second for braising and moistening.
- GlazeGlace de viande, stock reduced to a syrupy, near-solid brown essence, brushed on to give gloss and colour. It is not a sugar glaze and not a jelly for setting.
- Braising in muslinEach bird was wrapped so it held its shape, then pressed between two dishes as it cooled to set the form. This is shaping for presentation rather than anything the cooking requires.
- If you want the effectThe construction — a boned small bird, liver forcemeat, lentil purée, glazed sausage — survives in modern game cookery using quail or poussin. Work from a current recipe with proper poultry temperatures rather than adapting this one.
Larks were eaten in Britain for centuries and were still a commercial item in the late nineteenth century, sold in quantity at Leadenhall Market and netted in numbers on the Sussex downs; lark pies and puddings were a recognised regional speciality around Dunstable. A book of "high class cookery" would include them because tiny birds served whole, boned and glazed were exactly the sort of labour-heavy garniture that distinguished a professional kitchen from a domestic one he the, not in the meat, of which a lark yields barely a mouthful. Public feeling turned against the trade over the same decades, and protection came piecemeal, culminating in the Protection of Birds Act 1954. The recipe survives as a record of a taste, and of a scale of kitchen labour, that has since disappeared.