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Roast Larks
These little birds are in season from November till March. These may be drawn or not, according to taste; arrange them all on a thin skewer; brush them over with melted butter; roast them for ten minutes, basting them well. Dish them up on buttered toast, with fried crumbs and watercress round, and quarters of lemon. Wheatears. These are cooked and served in the same way as larks.
This is a recipe for two songbirds that can no longer legally be taken, sold or served in Britain, Europe or North America. It is worth reading as a record of Victorian game cookery, not as instructions.
- The birds are protectedSkylarks and wheatears are wild birds protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and in the United States both fall under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Under the EU Birds Directive the wheatear is protected, while the skylark is an Annex II species that may still be hunted in certain member states under national rules. In Britain, taking, killing, possessing or selling either is a criminal offence, with no exemption for the table.
- There is no lawful supplyNineteenth-century cooks bought larks by the dozen from poulterers who bought them from netters. That trade is gone. Nothing sold as game today is a lark or a wheatear, and anything offered as such should be refused.
- "Drawn or not, according to taste"Small birds were traditionally roasted ungutted so that the trail would baste the flesh. Cooking an ungutted bird for ten minutes leaves gut contents at temperatures where Salmonella and Campylobacter survive comfortably, and wild birds carry both. This is a genuine hazard independent of the legal one.
- Ten minutes at what heatThe recipe gives no temperature at all, only "roast them for ten minutes," so the timing cannot be reproduced on its own terms even before the other problems.
- If you want the dishThe garnish — buttered toast, fried crumbs, watercress, lemon quarters — is the standard Victorian service for any small roast bird, and a current recipe for quail or poussin will use much the same treatment. Follow that recipe rather than this one.
Larks were a genuine article of commerce in Victorian Britain. Dunstable in Bedfordshire was famous for them, and Leadenhall Market in London handled them in great numbers each winter, netted on stubble and downland between November and March — exactly the season this book specifies. Wheatears had their own trade: Sussex shepherds on the South Downs caught them in turf traps during the autumn passage and sold them to Brighton and Eastbourne hotels, where they were a local delicacy well into the nineteenth century. A book of high-class cookery would list them alongside snipe and ortolan as the small-bird end of the game larder, birds served several to a plate and eaten more or less whole. Public feeling turned first: the Wild Birds Protection Acts of the 1870s and 1880s began closing seasons, though these ran through spring and summer, and winter lark netting continued, with larks still being sold well into the twentieth century. The recipe survives as evidence of how recently a songbird counted as dinner.