The spirit of cookery

Widgeon (Fr. sarcelle) and teal are wild birds of the duck tribe, and may receive the same culinary treatment. They may be roasted, but require a sharp, i.e., acidulous and hot, sauce ; they yield good salmis or fillets of breast. When they taste fishy they must be marinaded, and then yield good ragouts. By a process of generalization from the examples of goose, and duck, and fowl, culinary writers have arrived at many recipes for the preparation of these birds. None of them show any specificity in the preparation of the birds themselves, which are always to be roasted before being treated further. This is evidently the result of their peculiar flavour. The variation which gives the pretext for the title is always in the sauce or garnish only. Ortolans are rarely eaten in England ; when obtainable, they are said to come from Belgium ; they are in season in September, but in the South of France, e.g., at Toulouse, they can be had in numbers in June, being probably animals caught in spring and kept in cages. Ortolans may be baked on croustades lined with /a?‘cc, or rubbed with butter, crumbed, and roasted for ten minutes only ; they may also be roasted in paper, papillotes or caisses, and accompanied with a good sauce. Wheatears (Fr. motteux, cul blanc) are in season in August, and are rarely to be had in London ; they are more plentiful at Brighton, in the neighbourhood of which WHEATEARS AND LARKS town they are sometimes caught in numbers. They are only two-thirds of the size of larks, but when in good condition they are so fat as to resemble a small lump of butter. They may be roasted or baked in oiled paper cases, each case taking two little birds, and some minced and prepared mushroom. Larks afford, like quails, a remarkable illustration of the differences in the views of things at which men may arrive under different circumstances. In this country, and on the Continent, many persons strongly object to the killing and eating of larks, while in the South of Europe these birds are such a nuisance at certain times, that they have to be killed in numbers in order to reduce the damage which they inflict on agriculture. Migratory birds, they collect in the southern peninsulas which project into the Mediterranean, and are dying, or being killed by birds of prey and men, in enormous numbers. The ancient- Athenians ate many larks, as do the southern Spaniards of the present day, when quails are not plentiful. They were preserved, and it was forbidden to kill them on the island of Lemnos, as it was erroneously believed that they had saved it from the locusts. The lark in the French language has a commonplace name besides a special culinary one ; it remains an alouette until it is plucked, trussed, and ready to be spitted, and then it becomes a mauviette. The English physician Lister, of the time of Queen Anne, laid it down as a principle concerning the culinary use of larks, that unless of twelve larks each did weigh at least 7 drachms, they were not eatable; if they weighed as much they were passable, and if they weighed together 100 drachms, or 12i oz., or more, they were excellent. The preparations of larks are roasting in the plain or egged and crumbed state, fnjing and braising in the stuffed or empty state. A good mode is to bed the larks on some farce on a silver dish or in a braising-pan, to cover them 5o8