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LARK PASTRY (to be eaten cold)
Take a dozen larks, empty them, cut off their heads, legs, and necks, and put these into a saucepan with a few trimmings of veal, if veal trimmings are at hand, a sprig of parsley, a very small sprig of thyme, a sliced carrot, and a pint of water. Let them simmer very gently until the liquid is considerably reduced, and will jelly. Mince the livers of the larks finely, and mix them with half a pound of lean veal, half a pound of sausage-meat, four ounces of unsmoked bacon, three table-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, a dessert-spoonful of powdered thyme, a tea-spoonful of white pepper, and a little salt. The quantity of the latter must be regulated by the condition of the bacon. Work up half of this forcemeat with a table-spoonful of light wine, and fill the larks with it. Line a mould or pie-dish throughout with a good stiff crust. Put a layer of loose mincemeat at the bottom, lay the larks upon it, and fill up the empty spaces with mincemeat. Place three or four slices of bacon on the top, put on the cover, fasten the edges securely, and cut a slit in the middle through which the gravy may afterwards be poured. Bake in a moderate oven. When the pastry is sufficiently baked, strain the liquor into it through the hole in the top, then cover it with a small ornament, and let it get quite cold before cutting it; indeed, it will be better if the dish is kept a day or two before being used. Time to bake, from an hour and a half to two hours. Probable cost of larks, 1s. 6d. per dozen. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
This is a raised game pie built around a bird that can no longer legally be taken, sold or eaten in Britain or across most of Europe. The technique is sound period cookery; the main ingredient puts the dish out of reach.
- The larks are the problemThe skylark and its near relations are protected wild birds. Killing, taking, selling or possessing them is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 in the UK. Elsewhere in Europe the position varies: the EU Birds Directive gives general protection, but a limited and much-contested hunt of skylarks persists in a few member states. There is no lawful route to a dozen larks in Britain.
- No commercial source existsUnlike quail or pigeon, larks were never brought into farmed production. Nothing in a poulterer's or game dealer's stock is a substitute in the sense the recipe means, and the recipe depends on the birds whole, with their livers, heads, legs and necks all used.
- What 1s. 6d. a dozen tells youThe costing assumes an open urban market in small wild birds sold by the dozen, the same trade that supplied wheatears and thrushes. That market was closed by stages from the 1880s onward, and the price line is now a historical artefact rather than a shopping note.
- Wild-shot small birdsEven setting the law aside, birds of this size taken with shot may carry lead fragments through the flesh, which is then minced and baked inside a sealed crust where nothing can be picked out. Lead from shot in game meat is a recognised source of dietary exposure.
- The keeping instructionThe direction to hold the finished pie a day or two belongs to a cold-larder tradition of sealing meat under crust, bacon and set jelly. Modern food-safety practice for cooked meat pies does not rest on that seal, and the original gives no temperature for the holding period.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a raised game or pork pie with legally sold birds. The forcemeat proportions and the reduced bone-and-veal jelly poured in through the vent are the interesting parts of this method, and any modern game pie recipe will handle them with quantities and temperatures stated.
Small songbirds were ordinary market food in nineteenth-century Britain and remained so on the Continent for decades after: larks, wheatears and thrushes were sold by the dozen, spitted, potted, or baked whole in pies of exactly this kind, where the fragile birds were protected by a stiff crust and a savoury forcemeat and the bones contributed the gelatine that set the gravy. Cassell's includes it as a matter of course, alongside pigeon and plover, and prices it at eighteen pence the dozen. Pressure from the early bird-protection movement, and a succession of Wild Birds Protection Acts from the 1880s onward, gradually closed this trade in Britain; general statutory protection for British wild birds came with the Protection of Birds Act 1954, later consolidated in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Recipes like this one survive as evidence of how recently the boundary between wild bird and poultry sat somewhere quite different.