🤢 Frankly Gross 1907

Larks in Onions (Italian Recipe)

Eight boned larks baked inside hollowed onions, heads replaced, eyes removed.

From: Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery
Published: 1907
Yikes Scale: Big yikes

Exactly as printed, 1907

Larks in Onions. (Italian Recipe.) -INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons. -8 larks, 4 Spanish onions of equal size, 3 thin slices of bacon, pint of stock, a fowl's liver, a bunch of herbs, lb. of veal forcemeat, pepper and salt. AVERAGE COST, 38. Clean and bone the larks, then stuff them with the liver and herbs chopped very fine.

Put the bacon at the bottom of a stewpan and upon it the larks; just cover with stock and simmer for about 1/4 hour. Peel and blanch the onions, cut them in half and take out enough from each to make room for a lark and a little forcemeat. Put a little in each 1/2 onion, then a lark, putting on the head (from which the eyes should be removed) with a little forcemeat, then cover with buttered paper and bake long enough to set the stuffing. Lift out with care, and having drained off the fat, glaze and serve with Spanish sauce.

TIME.- hour.

Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery, 1907. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Larks are songbirds, protected across Europe and the US, and the trade that supplied them by the dozen is gone. There is no lawful way to make this.

The parenthesis about the eyes is what makes it unforgettable. Beeton is not being macabre; she is giving a practical instruction about a presentation her readers would have recognised.

Notes from the 21st century

The stated hour is far too long. For a bird this size it belongs to a cooler oven and constant turning. By any modern reckoning it would be ruined.
Songbird eating was industrial. Larks, ortolans and reed birds were netted and sold by the hundred. Protection came because the populations were collapsing.
Blanch the onions first. A brief boil to soften them and take the rawness out — not a modern refresh in ice water.

Also in this book

Boiled Calf's Udder for French Forcemeat — Udder stewed, pounded to a paste and sieved — one of the three canonical ingredients of French forcemeat.
Custards, Boiled — Three laurel leaves, or lemon rind, or vanilla — Mrs. Beeton offers them as equivalents.
Food for Infants, and its Preparation — Arrowroot, bread and baked flour, ranked as infant diets, with the packet food declared best of all.

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