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Sparrow
THE House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) differs from the Hedge Sparrow (Accentor modularis), the former being a grain-eater, but the latter an insect-eater. The Cock Sparrow (Passer) is notoriously a lascivious bird; it "loosens the belly by its broth; being much eaten it excites venery; the youngest are best." "This little cock sparrow shall make me a stew, And his giblets shall make me a little pie too."
Sparrow pudding is an appetizing dish which strengthens the sexual organs. In early English days Sparrows were eaten commonly; they make an excellent pot-pie, with a flavour superior to that of Quails, or they may be substituted for Larks in a kidney pudding. The food of House Sparrows is 75 per cent of corn, one kind and another. The late Lord Lilford, a distinguished naturalist, has said: "I consider that every bird-catcher who confines his operations strictly to the taking of Sparrows is a benefactor, and should be subsidized by the parish authorities." His Lordship has further advised the shooting of Sparrows as they fly to, and from, the cornfields, as excellent practice for partridge shooting, each bird killed representing at least a bushel of corn saved. An old saying has it that "The Spink, and the Sparrow, are the devil's bow and arrow." In the Naworth Accounts for October, 1621, occurs an entry of purchase, “Sparrows, 2 dozen, iiiid." (fourpence.) They are supplied in America as "rice birds" for the market in large numbers. A well-known game, and poultry dealer in Albany "took in one thousand and seven hundred Sparrows last week, and sold them all." From A proper new Book of Cookery (1594) is copied the following receipt : "To stew Sparrows, take ale, and set it on the fire, and when it seeteth scum it, and then put in your Sparrows, and small raisins, sugar, and sinamon, ginger, and dates, and let them boil together; and then take marrow, or butter, and a little verjious, and keepe it close. And when it is enough, make sops in platters, and serve them forth." Our ancestors did not despise small "byrdys" at their public feasts. At a banquet given to his friends in the sixteenth century by John Stafford, when he was Bishop of Bath and Wells, the small byrdys were chiefly Sparrows, and they were cooked according to the recipe now formulated. It is told respecting the holy and humane Saint Francis of Assisi, (who was throughout his life on terms of familiar affection with all animated nature about him), that "as he breathed out his last sigh," at nightfall, October 2nd, 1226, in the Portiuncula, "innumerable larks alighted singing on the thatch of his cell, as if to salute the fond soul just taking flight."
The 1594 receipt embedded in this entry is a genuine set of instructions, but the bird it calls for cannot lawfully or safely be put on a modern table in most of the world. The notes below explain the obstacles and gloss the older terms.
- The bird is protectedIn Britain and across the EU the house sparrow is a wild bird protected by law, and it sits on the UK red list of birds of conservation concern after steep twentieth-century declines. Taking or killing one to cook is an offence, whatever Lord Lilford thought of bird-catchers as parish benefactors.
- Wild small birds carry real pathogensPasserines are a documented source of Salmonella Typhimurium, and small birds can carry Chlamydia psittaci, both potentially transmissible during plucking and drawing. There is no inspection, no chill chain and no way to know what a garden bird has been feeding on, which may include contaminated grain.
- No temperature, no timeThe receipt says only "let them boil together" and "when it is enough." There is no cooking time and no way to judge doneness beyond the cook's eye.
- The medicinal claim is doctrine-of-signatures folkloreThe sparrow's reputation for "exciting venery" comes from its observed mating behaviour, not from anything in its flesh. Nothing in the bird, the broth or the pudding acts on the sexual organs.
- "Rice birds" were not sparrows"Rice birds" -- The name in the American market usually meant the bobolink, shot in the southern rice fields and now protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; introduced house sparrows were also sold under such names.
- Reading the old termsVerjuice is the sour juice of unripe grapes or crab apples, used where a modern cook would reach for lemon or wine vinegar; "sops" are slices of bread laid in the dish to take up the liquor; "seeteth" is seetheth, boils; "keepe it close" means covered. Marrow here is beef bone marrow, used as the enriching fat.
- If you want the dishThe sweet-spiced ale broth with raisins, dates, cinnamon and ginger is characteristic of late Tudor cookery and worth knowing, but it should be followed from a current recipe using a farmed bird from a licensed game or poultry supplier.
This entry comes from a genre of Edwardian writing that treated the larder as a pharmacopoeia, and its sparrow lore is inherited rather than observed: the claim that sparrow broth "loosens the belly" and "excites venery" descends from classical and medieval humoral texts, where the bird's conspicuous breeding habits were read as a signature of its effect on the eater. Small birds were genuinely eaten in England for centuries, with sparrows, larks and other "small byrdys" appearing at institutional and episcopal feasts; the Naworth Castle household accounts quoted here, recording two dozen sparrows for fourpence in October 1621, are the sort of everyday evidence that survives for the practice. The 1594 receipt from A Proper New Book of Cookery is a fair specimen of Tudor cooking, with its ale, dried fruit, sugar and warm spices and its bread sops to soak up the liquor, a sweet-savoury balance that English taste largely abandoned in the eighteenth century. The economic argument running through the entry, that each sparrow shot saved a bushel of corn, belongs to the long agricultural campaign against the bird, from parish sparrow clubs paying bounties on heads to the nineteenth-century shipment of small birds to market by the thousand. That the same species is now red-listed in Britain is the sharpest thing this page has to say about the century between then and now.