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Snipes, Superlative
Prepare some forcemeat as follows. Take three ounces of fat bacon and three ounces of fowl's liver, and cut both into pieces an inch square. Fry the bacon over a sharp fire, move it about constantly, and in three or four minutes add the liver. When this is half done, mince it finely with the bacon, season the mixture with a little prepared seasoning (see HERBS, AROMATIC, POWDERED), add a little salt and half a clove of garlic if liked, and pound all in a mortar to a smooth, compact mass. Press it through a wire sieve, and keep it in a cool place if not wanted immediately. Roll out one-half of it with a little flour, form it into a sort of thick band, and arrange it in a circle at the bottom of a dish. Take four partially-roasted snipes, split them open down the back, and spread forcemeat, a quarter of an inch chick, over the inside of each. Lay the birds in the centre of the dish, and cover them lightly with forcemeat. Smooth them with the flat part of a knife which has been dipped in hot water, and put the dish into a quick oven. Wipe away the fat which has come from the forcemeat, pour truffle sauce over the snipes, and serve. Time, twenty-five minutes to bake the entree. Probable cost of snipes, very variable. Sufficient for three persons.
A Victorian game entrée built on a gratin forcemeat — bacon and liver fried, pounded and sieved — used here as both the base and the coating for split snipe. The hinge is the liver: it goes into the mortar half-cooked, and the finished dish depends on the oven being hot enough to set the farce quickly without drying the birds.
- A quick ovenRead this as a hot oven, roughly 400-450F (200-230C). The birds are already partially roasted; the twenty-five minutes is to set and lightly brown the forcemeat, not to cook the snipe through.
- Fowl's liverChicken livers, three ounces (about 85 g), trimmed of any green-stained parts and sinew. They should still be pink in the centre when they come off the heat, since they cook again in the oven.
- Prepared seasoningCassell's cross-reference points to a powdered aromatic herb blend — typically dried thyme, marjoram, bay, mace, nutmeg, clove and pepper ground fine. A scant quarter-teaspoon for this quantity of farce is plenty; these mixtures are assertive.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds. The sieving is not optional if you want the smooth, spreadable texture the recipe assumes — push the purée through a fine mesh with a rubber scraper to catch membrane and gristle.
- "A quarter of an inch chick"A printer's error for thick. Roughly 6 mm, which is about as much farce as will cling to a split bird without sliding off.
- Sourcing snipeWild snipe cannot be bought in the United States and is a seasonal game-dealer item in Britain. Four quail, or two woodcock, work with the same method; check the birds early, as a substitute will not take exactly the same time as snipe.
- The trailSnipe are traditionally roasted undrawn, the trail being considered the best of the bird. If yours arrive undrawn, remove the gizzard only, and the trail can be worked into the forcemeat rather than discarded.
- Truffle sauceA demi-glace or strong game stock reduced with Madeira and chopped truffle — essentially sauce Périgueux. A well-reduced game jus with a little truffle oil or preserved truffle stands in without embarrassment.
- YieldThree servings as the original states, which is generous for four small birds; treat it as a first course for four if the sauce is rich.
Snipe held a peculiar rank in nineteenth-century British cookery: small, hard to shoot, and eaten whole and undrawn, they were the mark of a table that could command wild game rather than poultry. This recipe belongs to the school of French-influenced service that Cassell's was translating for the middle-class household — the farce is essentially a gratin forcemeat, a standard preparation of the professional kitchen in which liver and fat bacon are seized over high heat, pounded and sieved into a paste used to line dishes, stuff birds, or spread on croûtes. The truffle sauce and the circle of forcemeat at the base of the dish are pure restaurant presentation, the kind of thing a cook with a mortar, a wire sieve and time could produce at home in imitation of a chef's entrée. That the book gives the cost of snipe as "very variable" says a good deal: this was market-dependent food, priced by what the guns had brought in that week.