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SNIPES (a la Minute)
Pluck three snipes carefully, and truss them for roasting. Dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a saucepan, lay the snipes in it side by side and breast downwards, and add two finely-minced shallots, or small onions, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Move the saucepan about over a sharp fire till the birds are lightly browned, pour over them as much good stock and sherry mixed as will barely cover them, and add the strained juice of half a lemon and a small piece of crust of bread finely grated. Simmer all gently together till the birds are done enough. Lift them out, and put them on a hot dish. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of Bovril in the sauce, stir it over the fire for a minute, and pour it over the birds. Serve immediately. Time, seven to ten minutes to fry the birds; seven to ten minutes to stew them. Probable cost of snipes, very variable. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A stovetop game dish that never sees an oven: the birds are browned in butter, then barely covered with stock and sherry and simmered until done. The whole thing takes under twenty minutes, and the main risk is overcooking.
- The hinge: do not overcookA snipe weighs only three or four ounces and its breast dries out fast. Seven to ten minutes of gentle simmering is genuinely enough; the meat should stay rosy at the bone. If you push it to a well-done bird you will have wasted the game.
- Sourcing the birdsSnipe are not sold in supermarkets and in the United States they may only be taken in season under licence. Quail (a similar 4-5 oz bird, widely farmed) is the closest swap, though quail is milder and the sauce will taste less gamey; squab is a considerably larger bird and will need longer than the times given.
- Trussing and the trailSnipe were traditionally cooked undrawn, with only the gizzard removed, the innards being considered the best of the bird. The instruction to "truss them for roasting" assumes the long bill is skewered through the thighs to hold the legs. If that is more than you want, draw them and tie the legs with string.
- BovrilA concentrated beef extract, still sold under that name. A teaspoon of Marmite is not the same thing; use beef base, demi-glace, or a similar meat extract if Bovril is unavailable. Its job here is to thicken the flavour and darken the sauce at the last moment, so add it off the boil and taste before adding salt.
- Grated bread crustThe "small piece of crust of bread finely grated" is the thickener: dried crust grated to a coarse powder. Use dry breadcrumbs or panko crushed fine. It gives body without the pastiness of flour.
- Sharp fireMeans high heat. Brown the birds in a wide pan over a strong flame so the butter colours them rather than steams them, then drop the heat right down once the liquid goes in — a hard boil will toughen the breasts.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons or 55 g; a dessert-spoonful is about two teaspoons. "As much good stock and sherry mixed as will barely cover them" in a snug pan is around a cup total; a dry or medium sherry, roughly one part to three of stock, keeps it from going sweet.
- ServingThree snipe for three or four people is a light course, not a dinner. Serve each bird on a fried or toasted crouton to catch the sauce, which is the classic treatment for these birds.
"A la minute" simply means done in the moment — a dish assembled and finished in one pan while the diners wait, as opposed to the long roasting and larding that dominated Victorian game cookery. Snipe and woodcock held a particular prestige in nineteenth-century English kitchens: small, hard to shoot, intensely flavoured, and traditionally cooked undrawn; Cassell's notes the cost as "very variable" rather than quoting a price, without giving a reason. The Bovril at the end offers a rough terminus. Bovril was developed in the 1870s and 1880s — Johnston's fluid beef, renamed Bovril in the mid-1880s — so the honest inference is only that this text postdates the mid-1880s, and its use in place of the glaze a professional kitchen would have got from a stockpot suggests this dictionary's practical bent, aimed at households with a cook but no brigade behind her.