How to Cook a Young Swan

On November 14th, 1931, the following advertisement appeared in the Personal columns of The Times.

‘Cygnets (young swans) supplied dressed for dinner and banquets, or alive for ornamental waters — Master, Great Hospital, Norwich’; and here is a modern recipe for cooking them. It is one of Francatelli’s, and in spite of his Italian name Charles Elmé Francatelli was an Englishman born and bred, and prided himself on that fact, but he had inherited a gift for cooking from his Italian forebears and also had the advantage of being a pupil of the great Carême. The English cook who only knows English cookery is at a disadvantage: ‘He little knows of England who only England knows.’