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WOODCOCK (a la Perigueux)
Truss three woodcocks, cover them with layers of bacon, and tie these on securely with string. Put them into a stewpan, pour over them as much richly-flavoured stock as will barely cover them, and add a glassful of sherry or Madeira. Let them simmer gently till done enough. Drain them, and remove the tapes. Put them on a dish, pour over them some Perigueux or truffle sauce, and serve.
A short Victorian entry that assumes you already know how to handle game birds and have a pot of truffle sauce standing by. The two things it leaves unsaid are how briefly the birds should cook and what Périgueux sauce actually is.
- Cook them briefly"Till done enough" is the whole difficulty. Woodcock are small, lean and dark-fleshed, and a gentle simmer much beyond a quarter of an hour is likely to leave the breast grey and dry. Take them out while the breast is still rosy and let them rest in the covered pan off the heat.
- Sourcing the birdsWoodcock are wild game, not farmed. In the UK and much of Europe they are legal in season and sold by game dealers; in the United States they are a federally regulated migratory bird and cannot be bought or sold at all. Quail, squab or small partridge take the same treatment.
- "Remove the tapes"Tape here means the string or narrow linen band holding the bacon in place, not adhesive tape. Cut it away before saucing, and lift off the bacon, which will have given up its fat and gone flabby.
- Barding, and the trailThe bacon is there because woodcock carry almost no fat. Use thin unsmoked streaky bacon or fatback so the cure does not overwhelm the bird. Woodcock were traditionally cooked undrawn, with the intestine (the "trail") left in and later spread on toast; if that is not wanted, have the dealer draw them.
- A glassfulThe recipe says only "a glassful"; in Victorian cookery a wineglass was conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz (roughly 55-60 ml). Sherry or Madeira in that quantity flavours the poaching liquid rather than the finished sauce.
- Périgueux sauceA classical demi-glace finished with chopped black truffle and Madeira; truffle sauce is the same idea made more simply. If starting from scratch, reduce good brown stock to a glossy sauce, then add truffle and Madeira off the boil so the aroma is not driven off.
- Use the poaching liquidThe recipe drains the birds and discards nothing explicitly, but the stock they cooked in is the best part. Strain it, reduce it hard, and work it into the sauce.
- YieldThree woodcock serve three as a game course, or two as a main dish. Serve with fried breadcrumbs or toast to catch the sauce.
Perigueux is the chief town of the Perigord in south-western France, the country most closely associated with the black winter truffle, and in nineteenth-century kitchen French anything "a la Perigueux" meant truffles in the sauce. Woodcock had a standing in Victorian game cookery out of all proportion to its size: a migratory bird, available only for a few winter months, difficult to shoot, and prized for a dark, faintly liverish flesh that was often said to need no other seasoning than its own trail. Truffle and Madeira made it a costly dish, and Cassell's sets it down without comment among its other game entries, as household dictionaries of the period tended to do.