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Woodcock, Stuffed
Pluck and singe the birds, take out the insides, chop these fine with bacon, parsley, onion, salt, and pepper; mix them with the yolks of two eggs; fill the woodcocks with this forcemeat, sew them together, and truss as for roasting. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with thin slices of bacon, put in the birds, and cover them also with bacon; let them simmer for a quarter of an hour, pour in a cupful of broth and half a glassful of white wine; let them boil over a gentle fire. When done enough, take out the birds and lay them on a dish; skim the fat off the sauce, strain it, add a dash of vinegar, and pour it over the birds.
A braise rather than a roast, and unusual in that the bird's own innards become the stuffing. The birds are small, so the whole thing moves faster than the wording suggests.
- Sourcing the birdsIn Britain and much of Europe woodcock is legal game in season and can be bought from a game dealer. In the United States the American woodcock is a migratory game bird under federal protection: it may be taken by a licensed hunter in season but cannot legally be bought or sold, so a market bird is not an option. Quail or squab stand in for the method, though not for the flavour.
- The trail"Take out the insides" means the trail — liver, heart, lungs and intestine — which in woodcock cookery is treated as a delicacy rather than waste. Discard only the gizzard and the eyes. The gizzard is gritty and the one part that spoils the forcemeat.
- Old measuresA cupful is about 8 fl oz of broth. "Half a glassful" of white wine means half a wine glass of the period, roughly 1 to 1.5 fl oz — a splash, not a deglaze.
- Stewpan and baconA stewpan is a heavy lidded saucepan or small casserole, wide enough to take the birds in one layer. The bacon above and below is a barding layer, not an ingredient of the sauce; use unsmoked streaky or fatback, thinly sliced, or the smoke will swamp the birds.
- TimingThe quarter-hour simmer appears to be the bacon rendering and the birds taking colour in the fat, before any liquid goes in; the recipe does not mention a lid, so covering the pan is the reader's choice. After the broth and wine go in, birds this small are likely to need only a further ten minutes or so. A woodcock cooked to well done is dry and livery; traditionally the breast is left rosy — but see the caution about the egg-bound forcemeat.
- SingeingPlucked game keeps fine hairs and pin feathers. Pass the bird briefly through a gas flame or over a lit alcohol burner, then wipe. A blowtorch works and is easier to control.
- Sewing and trussingFine butcher's twine and a trussing needle: close the vent, then tie the legs against the body so the forcemeat stays put. Woodcock are traditionally trussed with their own long beak passed through the thighs, which does the same job.
- The sauceSkim, strain and finish with vinegar off the heat — a teaspoon of good wine vinegar is plenty for two birds. The point is to cut the fat from the bacon and the trail, not to make the sauce sharp.
- YieldOne woodcock per person, two if the diners are serious. Fried bread or toast under the birds catches the sauce, as was common for roast woodcock in this period, though this recipe simply says to lay them on a dish.
Woodcock stood high in the Victorian game hierarchy, praised for the flavour of its trail and for the convention that it needed neither drawing nor much cooking. This belongs to the era when household dictionaries of cookery aimed to cover everything a servant-keeping family might encounter, and this stuffed braise is closer to French practice than to the plain roast, in its barding bacon, its forcemeat bound with egg yolk, and its finishing dash of vinegar. Birds like this reached town tables through game dealers during a short autumn and winter season; the modern reader's chief difficulty is not the technique but the legal and practical business of getting the bird at all.