Simon Courtauld

Small is beautiful | 13 January 2007

My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz

My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz, sometimes in the company of Rudyard Kipling. In London, it amused him to ask for these little birds of the bunting family when dining at the Savoy, though I don’t think they were ever on the menu. Ortolans have always been a French delicacy: la chasse aux petits oiseaux, which involves trapping small birds in nets, may continue in parts of south-west France, but their sale for the table has been banned for some years. President Mitterrand, no great respecter of the law, was said to have had ortolans for one of his last meals, a week before he died — almost fulfilling the wish expressed by a character in Disraeli’s novel, The Young Duke, that he should die ‘eating ortolans to the sound of soft music’. The birds were traditionally taken alive, force-fed and then drowned in armagnac before being roasted and eaten, bones and all, with a napkin over one’s head.

We don’t have quite the same attitude to small birds in this country, preferring to listen to them and, in the past, to keep them caged as pets. I have once eaten starling breasts, which had a surprisingly gamey taste; apparently they can be bought smoked in Sweden. Of the smaller game birds for which there is a shooting season, moorhen has been sampled by my son, with a flavour, he says, between that of a pigeon and a wild duck. Snipe are fascinating little birds, which require no more than ten minutes’ roasting in a medium oven; or they can be made into a snipe pudding, using suet, herbs, wine, chopped onion and mushrooms. This used to be enjoyed for breakfast by Edward VII, before he got down to the serious eating business of the day.

The king of these small birds, however, is surely the woodcock, not only for its flavour but for its remarkable way of life and the fact that it is so popular a subject for painting.

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