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Potted Larks
Carefully pick, singe and draw the required number of larks, dry them, sprinkle plentifully inside and out with pepper, salt and pounded mace, place them in stone jars with a piece of butter, tie down and bake in a moderate oven. When cooked, take the larks out of the gravy, put them into potting jars, pour clarified butter over, cover them with stout paper, tie them down tightly and keep them in a dry closet until required for use.
This is a preserving recipe, and both its main ingredient and its method put it out of reach today. The problems are legal and microbiological rather than a matter of technique.
- The bird is protectedLarks fall under wild-bird protection law: the Eurasian skylark appears on the list of species protected under the United States Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and European legislation restricts the taking and sale of small songbirds, though a few countries still permit limited traditional hunting under derogation. There is no ordinary commercial supply.
- Potting is a preservation method, not a flavour trickThe point of the butter seal and the tied paper is to exclude air so the meat keeps for weeks without cold. That creates exactly the low-acid, oxygen-free environment in which Clostridium botulinum produces toxin, and nothing here — no cure, no acid, no measured salt — inhibits it.
- "A dry closet" means room temperatureCooked meat held unrefrigerated under a fat seal is a classic setting for botulism, and the toxin itself gives no reliable warning by smell or taste, so spoilage signs cannot be relied on. Baking the birds first kills vegetative bacteria but not spores.
- No quantities, no temperature, no timeThe recipe specifies neither salt weight, oven time, internal temperature nor storage limit. There is no way to assess whether it ever reached a safe temperature or how long it was meant to keep.
- The paper cover is not a sealStout paper tied over a jar keeps out dust and insects. It is not hermetic, and it offers none of the protection of a modern processed and vacuum-sealed pack.
- If you want potted meatUse a current recipe with stated salt levels, cooking temperature and refrigerated shelf life. Do not adapt this one.
Larks, wheatears, ortolans and other small birds were legitimate market poultry in Britain, France and Italy well into the twentieth century, sold by the dozen and eaten whole or nearly so; London poulterers listed them alongside snipe and plover. Potting — cooking meat in a sealed stone jar, then packing it under clarified butter — was the standard domestic way to hold cooked game before mechanical refrigeration, and the same method was applied to beef, tongue, shrimps and cheese. Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book was published in 1896. Songbird hunting on this scale collapsed in the twentieth century under conservation law, beginning in the United States with the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which is why the dish survives only on the page.