Important: Safety Warning
This page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Larks
What is the use of laughing at the French because they eat redbreasts, blackbirds, thrushes, the humble chaffinch, and the familiar sparrow? Do we not eat skylarks, fieldfares, and wheatears in plenty? A great number of larks are sent to London from Cambridge; but the chief supply for now 200 years appears to come from Dunstable. Why Dunstable? Is there any mysterious connection between larks and straw hats? Why must we go to Bedfordshire for a lark? Is it there and there only that the sky falls? Wherever the sky falls and these birds are caught, the physician of Queen Anne, Dr. Lister, like his royal mistress a great gastronomer, judged of their goodness by their weight. He laid down the rule, which has ever since been held sound, that twelve larks should weigh thirteen ounces, and that if below that weight they are not good.
Roast Larks. - There is a difference between the French and the English way-but both agree in taking out only Laver the gizzard. The French put the larks on a little larkspit, which, running from side to side, pins on them at the same time bards of bacon. The larks are then roasted briskly for eight or ten minutes, and served upon toast. The English season the larks with chopped parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, rub them with yolk of egg, roll them in breadcrumbs, sprinkle them with oiled butter, roll them in crumbs again, run them on a larkspit, roast them for fifteen minutes before a bright fire, basting them with butter, and serve them with plenty of fried breadcrumbs. Lark Pudding or Pie. -For the perfection of a lark pudding, go to the Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street, and and ask for one. The contents of either pudding or pie are the same. Take the gizzards out of two dozen larks, and fry them lightly. Then put them into the pie dish or the pudding bowl, with a pound of veal and another pound of ham cut into small collops, seasoned with chopped parsley, shalot, mushrooms, pepper, and salt-which are first, however, to be boiled for a minute or two in a tumberful of broth and with a tablespoonful of flour. Bake the pie or boil the pudding for an hour and a quarter.