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WOODCOCK, SALMI OF (another way)
Draw the gravy from a pound of gravy beef, with a bit of lean ham, and a sheep's milt added to it. Then take a few shallots, a handful of mushrooms chopped, a few strips of ham, a carrot, a bunch of sweet herbs, such as we have indicated for the salmi of partridges, two cloves, half a dozen of peppercorns and the same number of blades of allspice. Fry all these for a short time in a stewpan with a little butter, then pour in a quarter of a pint of Madeira or sherry, and the gravy above mentioned. Put in also the backs and necks of the birds, leaving the rumps with the other limbs for the salmi. Let all stew very quietly. Season to taste, and at the expiration of a couple of hours strain the sauce. Then put into a stewpan about an ounce and a half of butter, and, when this boils, half a spoonful of flour. Stir the mixture as it boils until it has assumed a rich blonde colour; then add gradually the sauce, and let it boil a quarter of an hour longer. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon. If you have the trail, pound it, and mix it well with the sauce. Strain this over the woodcock into another stewpan. This latter must now be stood near the fire, so that it may heat without boiling. When the meat is fully penetrated with the sauce, serve it up very hot with fried sippets. As a variation from this mode, red wine may be substituted for white.
A salmi is a two-stage dish: the birds are roasted first, jointed, then finished in a sauce built from their own carcasses. Cassell's assumes you know that, so the roasting is never mentioned.
- Start with roasted birdsNothing here cooks the woodcock. Roast them first, until the breast is still pink, joint them into legs, breasts and rumps, and reserve the backs and necks for the sauce as directed.
- Sourcing the birdsWoodcock is not sold commercially in the United States and is only patchily available from British game dealers in season. Four quail or two squab stand in reasonably for two woodcock, though neither has the liver-heavy character the dish is built on.
- Sheep's miltA sheep's spleen, once a cheap thickener and enricher for brown sauces. Ask a halal butcher, or leave it out and add another few ounces of gravy beef; the sauce loses depth but not structure.
- Gravy beefShin or leg of beef, cut for long simmering. Brown it and simmer with the ham in about a quart of water for two to three hours before you begin, then strain: that is the "gravy" the recipe calls for.
- Quarter of a pintFive fluid ounces in imperial measure, so a scant two-thirds of a US cup of Madeira or sherry. Use a dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry.
- Blades of allspiceAllspice comes as berries, not blades; this is almost certainly blades of mace, which were often sold alongside it. Use six small pieces of mace, or a quarter teaspoon ground.
- The rouxAn ounce and a half of butter to "half a spoonful" of flour is far too little flour as written; work to roughly equal weights, about an ounce and a half of each, and cook to the blonde stage described before adding liquid.
- The hinge: never boil the finished dishOnce the sauce goes over the jointed birds the pan is only warmed through. Boiling squeezes the roasted meat dry and, if you have used the trail, curdles the pounded liver into grit. Hold it at a bare steam for ten minutes.
- Trail and sippetsThe trail is the woodcock's entrails, traditionally left in during roasting and pounded into the sauce; with the bird roasted underdone it is only lightly cooked, and the sauce is warmed rather than boiled once the trail goes in. Sippets are small triangles of bread fried in butter.
- YieldOne woodcock per person is the old rule; the quantity of sauce here comfortably dresses two to four birds and serves two to four.
Salmi (also salmis, generally taken to be a shortening of the French salmigondis, a hotchpotch) was a common nineteenth-century way of stretching small game birds into a dinner-party dish: roast them briefly, joint them, and simmer the carcasses into a fortified brown sauce that the meat is then reheated in. It suited kitchens that had a stockpot going. Woodcock in particular was prized because it was traditionally cooked undrawn, the trail being considered the best of the bird, and Cassell's assumption that the cook will pound it into the sauce reflects how ordinary that practice still was when the Dictionary was compiled. The alternate ending, red wine for white, is the sort of one-line variation the Dictionary used constantly to cover several recipes in a single entry.