Small is beautiful | 13 January 2007

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.