No. 281

Puree of Reedbirds or Larks with Chestnuts

Puree d'Ortolans ou d'Alouettes aux Marrons

Procure three dozen larks, pick them, remove the pouches and gizzards, and take off the fillets, laying them aside. Fry the carcasses in a quarter of a pound of fine butter, with half a pound of smoked, lean, raw ham, cut in quarter inch squares, and moisten with three quarts of game consomme (No. 192), and one quart of espagnole sauce (No. 414). Boil slowly and despumate for one hour, then drain and pound the carcasses and ham with one quarter of a pound of blanched rice cooked in consomme, and one pound of chestnuts; moisten this with the broth and strain all through a sieve, and afterward through a tammy, add some Madeira wine, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and when ready to serve, work into it a three ounce piece of fine butter, stirring it in vigorously till thoroughly melted. Saute the fillets when ready, and serve them with the soup.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a game purée from Ranhofer's professional kitchen, built on three dozen small songbirds. The birds themselves are the problem: every species named is now protected, and none can lawfully be bought, shot or served.

Reedbirds and larks are protectedThe "reedbird" of American menus is the bobolink, and larks are equally covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which makes it illegal to kill, possess or sell them in the United States. Ranhofer wrote before that law existed, when barrels of reedbirds arrived at market each autumn.
Ortolan is banned outrightThe ortolan bunting of the French title is protected across the EU under the Birds Directive of 1979; France's own ban on trapping followed, though enforcement against poachers and restaurants only became serious decades later. Trapping, sale and service are prohibited, and there is no legal commercial supply.
Three dozen birdsEven setting law aside, the quantity signals what this recipe is: a hotel dish that consumed thirty-six wild birds to yield a few quarts of soup, with only the small breast fillets kept whole. Use a current game or chestnut soup recipe instead.
DespumateTo skim. Ranhofer means the patient removal of scum and fat from the surface during the hour of slow simmering, repeated as it rises, which is what keeps a consommé-based purée clear-tasting rather than muddy.
TammyA tammy cloth is a worsted straining cloth, twisted at both ends to force the purée through. A fine chinois or a doubled square of muslin does the same work.
The cross-referencesNo. 192 is Ranhofer's game consommé and No. 414 his espagnole, a brown sauce of veal stock, roux and mirepoix reduced over hours. Neither is a shortcut ingredient; together they are most of the labour behind the recipe.
The finishing butterThe three ounces of butter worked in vigorously at the last moment is a monter au beurre, added after straining and just before service. It is the technique worth taking from this page.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where Charles Ranhofer cooked for more than thirty years, and its game chapters are a catalogue of what nineteenth-century America shot and ate. Small migratory songbirds were among the luxuries of that market: bobolinks fattening in the rice and reed marshes of the South Atlantic coast were shipped north by the barrel each late summer and sold as "reedbirds", while imported or domestic larks stood in for the ortolan of the French original. The pairing with chestnuts and Madeira is standard autumn game cookery, the nut giving body to a purée that rice alone would leave thin. Market hunting on this scale is exactly what the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was written to stop, and the dish survives now only as a record of how much wild protein a fashionable dining room could get through in a single service.