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WOODCOCK (a la Lucullus)
Roast the woodcocks in the usual way, and catch the trail on a toast. Take the birds up while they are still under-done, pour over them a little melted butter with which the yolk of an egg and a little cream has been mixed, sprinkle grated breadcrumbs lightly over them, brown them in a Dutch oven or with a salamander, and serve with brown gravy. Time to roast the woodcocks, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, uncertain.
A short Victorian luxury dish that assumes you already know how to roast a woodcock, then adds a rich egg-and-cream glaze and a crumb crust. Almost everything that needs explaining is in the equipment and the bird itself.
- Sourcing the birdWoodcock is not a market bird. In the United States the American woodcock is protected under migratory bird law and may be hunted in season but never sold, so it reaches the kitchen only through a hunter; in Britain and much of Europe it can be bought in season from a game dealer. Quail or snipe are the usual stand-ins, though snipe are smaller and will need less time.
- The trail"The trail" is the bird's intestines, which woodcock were traditionally roasted with, undrawn, so that the trail softened and fell onto the toast set beneath. It is the whole point of the dish for its admirers. Anyone uneasy about eating the gut of a wild bird, or serving a bird still deliberately underdone, should draw it and treat the toast as a plain sop for the juices.
- "The usual way" and the ovenThe book gives no temperature; Victorian roasting of small game meant fierce, close heat before the fire. Fifteen to twenty minutes implies a hot oven if you use one, which will leave the breast rosy -- what the recipe wants when it says to take the birds up underdone.
- Dutch oven and salamanderNeither means what a modern cook assumes. A Victorian Dutch oven is an open-fronted metal reflector stood before the fire; a salamander is an iron plate heated red and held above food to brown it. A hot broiler does the same job in a minute or two -- watch it, as the crumb and egg coating scorches quickly.
- The glazeMelted butter beaten with the egg yolk and a little cream, as the recipe says; the quantity given suits a small number of birds. Brush it on the hot birds and crumb them at once; if the butter cools the mixture stiffens and will not spread thinly.
- Breadcrumbs"Grated breadcrumbs" are dry crumbs from stale bread rubbed through a grater or sieve, not soft fresh ones and not commercial panko. Dry crumbs are what brown evenly under fierce top heat.
- Brown gravyA brown meat gravy; period versions range from a plain reduced stock to one thickened with flour and browning. The juices in the roasting pan, deglazed and reduced with a little stock, will serve.
- YieldOne woodcock per person, with its toast. The note "probable cost, uncertain" is the book's admission that the bird had no fixed market price.
The name is a restaurant flourish rather than a Roman recipe: Lucius Licinius Lucullus was a Roman general remembered less for his campaigns than for the extravagance of his table, and by the nineteenth century "a la Lucullus" had become shorthand on menus for a dish enriched past the point of necessity -- truffles, foie gras, cream, or here an egg-and-butter glaze and a crumb crust laid over a bird already considered the finest thing on the game list. Woodcock held that rank because it was scarce, hard to shoot, and traditionally roasted undrawn, the trail melting onto a slice of toast beneath; gastronomic and sporting writers tended to treat it as a delicacy that needs no help at all, which is rather the joke of gilding it this way. Its presence in Cassell's, a household dictionary aimed at middle-class kitchens, says something about the ambitions of that readership: the entry sits among hundreds of plain economical dishes, and even admits it cannot guess what the bird would cost you.