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SNIPES, COOKED (German fashion)
Pluck the birds, skin the head, and remove the eyes. Singe the bodies, and cut off the claws; twist the legs, disjointing them, and so bring the feet close to the thighs, and put the long beak through these as a skewer. The position will indicate how the breast may be kept thrown up by passing twine round the joints and lower part of the body, to tie at the back. Put the snipes in a stewpan just large enough to hold them with butter enough to keep them basted, turning as they are done on one side till they are tinged all over. About twenty minutes by a brisk heat will cook them. Toast slices of bread, pour on these the butter they were cooked in, and serve the birds on them. Dressed in this way, they are not drawn before the trussing.
SNIPES, GRAVY FOR. (See ORANGE GRAVY, FOR TEAL, WIDGEONS, SNIPES, WOODCOCK, ETC.).
A short, old-fashioned treatment of a small game bird: trussed with its own beak, roasted in butter in a covered pan, and served on a butter-soaked croûte. Almost everything that needs explaining here concerns the bird itself rather than the technique.
- Sourcing the birdsSnipe are wild game and are not sold in supermarkets; in the United States the sale of wild-shot migratory birds is prohibited outright, so they reach the kitchen only through a hunter. Where they cannot be had, semi-wild quail of about 4-5 oz behave similarly, though quail should be drawn.
- "Not drawn before the trussing"This is the hinge of the recipe. Snipe and woodcock are traditionally cooked with the intestines left in, the gizzard being the only part removed, and the cooked trail is spread on the toast. Treat this as a deliberate feature of game cookery rather than an oversight, and only do it with a very fresh, promptly cooled bird.
- The beak as skewerSkinning the head, removing the eyes, and threading the long bill through the folded thighs both holds the legs in place and makes the presentation. The kitchen twine round the joints and lower body does most of the work of holding the breast proud, so a small metal skewer will serve if the bill breaks.
- Stewpan, not roasting tinA Victorian stewpan is a straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Use a small heavy pan or cast-iron skillet just wide enough to hold the birds touching, so the butter pools deep enough to baste rather than burning off across an empty surface.
- "A brisk heat" and twenty minutesBrisk means a lively flame under the pan; the recipe is a stovetop treatment, not an oven one. Twenty minutes over a strong heat will take a snipe well past pink; many modern game cooks stop short of that and rest the birds, since snipe breast is very lean and turns dry and livery when overdone.
- The toastCut the bread thick enough to absorb the pan butter without collapsing, and toast it dry first. In practice the croûte is set under the birds for the last minutes of cooking in many versions, which catches the juices; here the butter is simply poured over at the end.
- YieldSnipe are very small: a whole bird runs to about 3-4 oz, less once dressed. Allow two birds a person as a course, one if they follow something substantial.
- The gravy cross-referenceThe entry points to an orange gravy given for teal, widgeon, snipe and woodcock, i.e. a wildfowl sauce; check that entry for its actual composition. It is optional, and butter and toast alone are the plainer service.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically like a dictionary, which is why a snipe recipe sits beside a bare cross-reference to a gravy. Snipe and woodcock occupied a peculiar place in nineteenth-century cookery: they were the birds a cook was expected to leave undrawn, the reasoning usually given being that they feed by probing soft ground and carry little in the gut worth removing, and the trail spread on toast was considered by many the best part of the dish. The 'German fashion' label presumably distinguishes this pan treatment from the more familiar English practice of roasting the birds before the fire over a toast set in the dripping pan, though the book does not say so.