No. 2230

Cases of Larks or Snow Birds

Caisses d'Alouettes

Bone thoroughly one dozen snow birds or larks; put the intestines into a pan with grated fat pork, a few chicken livers and a few foies-gras parings, fry over a quick fire, season and mix in some mushroom peelings. When this preparation is cold, pound and press it through a sieve, then mix in with it twelve ounces of chopped and pounded fat pork, four ounces of chopped and pounded lean pork, pound all together and pass through a sieve. Take out a third part and divide the other two-thirds into twelve parts and fill the birds with them; roll them up into balls, range them on the bottom of a saucepan and brush over with a little melted game glaze (No. 398) and Madeira wine, cook them quickly for a few minutes to stiffen, then remove. Oil twelve small oval paper cases, having them an inch and a quarter wide by two inches long; drain and set them on the grater to stiffen in the oven; cover the bottoms and sides with a layer of the forcemeat (No. 73), set a bird on top of each case, range them on a small baking sheet, push into a slack oven and a few moments later baste the birds with a little melted game glaze (No. 398); remove them five minutes after, dress on a dish and brush over with some good reduced sauce.

← No. 2229 Cases with Fat Livers—Small Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2231 Cases of Oysters a la Hilton →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a page to read rather than cook. The birds it calls for cannot legally be obtained in the United States or most of Europe, and the filling is built on organ trimmings handled in a way no modern kitchen would repeat.

The birds are protected"Snow bird" was a nineteenth-century American name for the dark-eyed junco (the name was also used for the snow bunting); the lark here is the European skylark or a related songbird. Native songbirds of this kind are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the US, with equivalent wild-bird protections in the EU and UK, which make taking, possessing, selling or serving them an offence. There is no licensed supply chain for them.
No substitution is offered hereQuail and other farmed game birds are sold legally, but they are a different size, structure and cooking time, and the recipe's whole method — boning a bird small enough to sit on a two-inch paper case — does not transfer. If you want to cook small game birds, work from a current recipe written for the bird you can actually buy.
The intestinesThe forcemeat begins with the birds' intestines, fried briefly and then pounded. Undrawn gut carries the bird's intestinal contents and its bacterial load, and brief frying of a mixed, moist paste is not reliable pathogen control.
"Mushroom peelings" and "foies-gras parings"Both are professional-kitchen scrap streams from a brigade that broke down whole ingredients daily. Neither is a measured quantity, and the recipe gives no weight for either, so the seasoning and fat balance of the finished forcemeat are not reproducible from the text as written.
Oven language, for readingA "quick fire" is high heat; a "slack oven" is a cool one, conventionally given as somewhere around 300F, though Ranhofer states no temperature. Here the cases are stiffened in it and the filled birds finished in it. The birds themselves are barely cooked — a few minutes to stiffen, five minutes in the oven — which is another reason the dish reads as unsafe by current standards.
Cross-references"No. 398" is Ranhofer's game glaze, a game stock reduced to a syrup, and "No. 73" is one of his forcemeats. The Epicurean is written as a closed system: almost no elaborate dish in it can be executed without turning to three or four other numbered entries first.
The casesThe oval "caisses" are small oiled paper containers, stiffened in the oven before filling. The recipe makes twelve, one case per bird, and they go to the table in the paper.

A Little History

Songbirds were ordinary market game across nineteenth-century Europe and America, sold by the dozen and treated as a delicacy precisely because so much labour went into so little meat — boning a lark, stuffing it with a forcemeat made from its own trimmings, and presenting it in a paper case two inches long is an exercise in demonstrating kitchen skill. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for roughly three decades and author of The Epicurean (1894), wrote for a restaurant that could put such a dish on its menu, and the American "snow bird" appears beside the French alouette because New York markets then sold small wild birds shot in quantity. That trade is what the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 were written to end, after decades of commercial hunting for both the table and the millinery trade; recipes like this one are among the clearest evidence of what those laws were aimed at.