Snipe
Snipe are best roasted with a piece of pork tied to the breast, or they may be stuffed and baked. -Mrs. M. R.
Two sentences of direction for a bird most cooks will never have handled. The method is sound, but everything that makes it work is left unsaid.
- What you are cookingA snipe is tiny, only a couple of ounces of meat once dressed, most of it breast. Count two birds per person as a course, three if it is the centre of the plate.
- SourcingWild-taken migratory game birds cannot legally be sold in the United States, so snipe come from a hunter or not at all (the same applies to woodcock). Farmed quail or small squab take the same treatment and are the practical stand-ins.
- The pork is the pointBarding is not garnish. A snipe has almost no fat and the breast dries out in minutes, so a thin sheet of fatback or unsmoked streaky bacon tied over it is what keeps the bird edible. Untie it for the last two or three minutes if you want colour on the skin.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. Small game birds want fast, hard heat; around 450F for roughly 12-15 minutes suits a barded snipe. Stuffed and baked, allow a little longer and check the bird itself, not the stuffing time.
- DonenessWild birds can carry salmonella and campylobacter, so take the thickest part of the breast to 165F. The classic sporting treatment serves snipe frankly rare; that is a risk the reader should take knowingly rather than by default.
- Trail and shotNineteenth-century sportsmen commonly roasted snipe undrawn and spread the cooked entrails on toast. This recipe does not ask for it. Whichever way you go, feel through the breast for lead shot before cooking and discard any meat pulped around a pellet.
- If you stuff themThe cavity holds perhaps a tablespoon. A crumb, shallot and herb stuffing bound with a little butter is the period style; anything wetter simply steams the bird from inside.
- ServingButtered toast under each bird to catch the drip, with the pan juices poured over, is the standard of the period. Watercress and a tart jelly are the usual accompaniments.
Snipe appear in Buckeye Cookery because in 1877 they were ordinary market food. Migratory shorebirds were shot commercially in enormous numbers across the Midwest and shipped to city stalls alongside plover, rail and woodcock, and a household cook in Ohio could reasonably expect to be handed a brace. That trade is what the Lacey Act of 1900 and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 dismantled, which is why the entry now reads as exotic rather than routine. The barding instruction is older than the book and general to all lean small birds: a wrapper of pork fat was the standard defence against a dry breast long before basting was practical in a wood-fired oven. The bird's own name is generally traced to a Scandinavian root describing its long bill, and the shooting term sniper is usually said to come from the difficulty of hitting one on its erratic flight. The attribution "Mrs. M. R." is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions by members of an Ohio church congregation and prints their initials rather than their names.