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Woodcock, Fillets Of
Take six woodcocks, cut neatly the fillets from each side of the breast and the slices from the sides. Season them all with pepper and salt. Put the large fillets into a saucepan, pour clarified butter over them, cover with a round of buttered paper, and let them cook gently till done enough. Put the small fillets into a buttered baking-dish, place a little piece of truffle upon each, and bake in a gentle oven. Arrange the fillets neatly in a circle on a dish, put a little truffle puree in the centre, and serve with brown gravy in a boat.
A late-Victorian game-course dish that assumes a cook with six woodcock, a truffle to spare and a stockpot of brown sauce already going. The method is sound and translates directly; the shopping list is the hard part.
- Sourcing the birdsWoodcock is wild game and cannot be bought in a supermarket. In Britain and Ireland Eurasian woodcock is shot in season and sold by game dealers; in the United States the American woodcock is a migratory bird that may be hunted under licence but may not be sold, so the only legal source is a hunter's own bag. Check your jurisdiction before planning the dish.
- What six birds actually yieldWoodcock are small birds; the American woodcock runs around 5-8 oz whole and the Eurasian bird is rather heavier. Six birds give twelve breast fillets plus the small side slices - a first course for six people at most, not a main.
- Clarified butter, gentlyThe large fillets are effectively confited: submerged in clarified butter over low heat, not fried. Keep the butter well below a simmer, around 150-160F, or the lean breast meat tightens and dries. Clarified butter is called for because the milk solids in whole butter would scorch and cloud.
- The buttered paperA round of buttered paper is a cartouche - parchment cut to the pan's diameter and laid directly on the surface. It keeps the meat submerged and slows evaporation. Baking parchment does the same job as the greaseproof of the period.
- "A gentle oven"For the small fillets in the baking dish, read 300-325F. They are thin and will be done in a few minutes; check at four or five.
- DonenessVictorian game cookery served woodcock breast distinctly pink, and "done enough" means just that. Wild birds are not held to the same handling standards as poultry, and current food-safety guidance for all poultry and game birds is 165F throughout. Cooking to that temperature will give firmer, greyer meat than the recipe intends; the choice is yours to make knowingly.
- TruffleThe recipe assumes fresh black truffle, sliced thin for the fillets and puréed for the centre. Preserved truffle peelings or a good truffle paste stand in for the purée. Truffle oil is not a substitute here - it is a different flavour and it dominates.
- Brown gravyMost likely a game-based brown sauce rather than a plain flour gravy: the carcasses and legs browned, simmered with a little stock, strained and reduced. The recipe does not say. Serving it separately in a boat keeps the fillets from going soggy on the dish.
- The legs and trailThe recipe uses only breast and side meat. Do not discard the rest - the legs are useful for the sauce, and the birds' intestines, traditionally called the trail, are the prized part of a woodcock, cooked and mashed with butter onto toast in the classic roast preparation.
Woodcock stood near the top of the Victorian game hierarchy, above pheasant and rivalled only by snipe. The bird's peculiar prestige rested on the trail: woodcock feed on earthworms and their intestine is conventionally left in during roasting, its contents spread on toast beneath the bird. This recipe departs from that whole-bird tradition and treats woodcock as a restaurant garnish instead - fillets lifted off the bone, poached in butter, ringed on a dish with a truffle puree and served with a sauce boat. The tell is the arithmetic: six birds dismantled to produce two dozen small pieces of meat, most of the carcass relegated to the stockpot.