Woodcock
The muse has sung the praises of the woodcock in the following exalted strain :- If partridge had the woodcock's thighs, 'Twould be the noblest bird that flies; If woodcock had the partridge breast, 'Twould be the best bird ever drest.
Tastes differ; and a good many persons have been heard to say that a woodcock and a partridge rolled into one are not equal to a grouse of prime condition. In one respect, however, the woodcock and his little cousin, the snipehe himself being a sort of snipe, a scolopax-is more honoured than any other species of game. He is never drawn, and every morsel of him is eaten, to the last entrail. Woodcock The first dainty bit to begin with is the head, which is a glory in itself, and well-nigh worthy of a nimbus. Then for the rest of the bird, -the wing is something too good, and this is excellence in the positive degree; comparative, the thigh is finer; superlative, nothing can surpass the trail. What a tribute is this to the woodcock's diet of worms! He will eat in a day double his own weight of worms, and when we enjoy a woodcock even to his trail, we ought always to give some of our love and gratitude to those worms to which we must all come at last to eat or to be eaten. The woodcock comes all the way from Norway to eat them in the end of autumn; and he goes on eating them here till he departs in March-though a few of his kind stay on and breed among us.
It has been above stated that the woodcock is never drawn. This is quite true in theory; but in practice one of two things occurs. The usual way of roasting the bird is to wrap him in a slice of bacon, which is to be tied round him with a thread; to place under him some toast, and to hang him tail downwards before the fire. As he revolves, and is basted, and enjoys the heat, the trail will drop out upon the toast beneath, and is to be spread equally over it when served. It is sometimes, however, found convenient to roast the bird in a different way-resting in a Dutchoven, or even in a casserole. In this case he is to be halfdone, and then the trail is to be taken out of him and to be used as follows, all except the gizzard :-Pound it in a mortar with about half its volume of bacon-fat, a little chopped shalot, some crumb of bread, salt and pepper. Spread this upon toast; let it roast or bake by the side of the woodcock for the remainder of his time, which is from twenty to thirty minutes; and let it be served under him with a lemon in quarters at his side. For sauce, mix a little good beef gravy with the butter which has basted him, and serve it apart; or take an orange gravy. Furthermore, it is to be remembered that the woodcock Woodsorrel is supposed to be the best of birds for the Bernardin Salmi.
The instructions assume a bird bought whole and undrawn from a game dealer, and a fire to hang it in front of. Both need translating, and the trail — the bird's intestine, the whole point of the dish — needs handling with more precision than the original gives.
- The hinge: the trailEverything here turns on the trail dropping or being lifted onto the toast. If you are roasting in an oven rather than on a spit, take the bird out at the halfway mark, draw out the trail, discard the gizzard (gritty, and the only part traditionally rejected), and pound the rest as directed. Do not skip the gizzard step.
- SourcingWoodcock is not a market bird. In Britain and Ireland it is shot in season and sold by game dealers; in the United States the American woodcock is a migratory game bird whose sale is prohibited, so it reaches the table only through a licensed hunter. Snipe can stand in, at roughly half the size and half the roasting time.
- "Hang him tail downwards before the fire"This is spit or string roasting in front of an open hearth, with a dripping pan and toast below. The oven equivalent is a very hot oven, 425–450F, with the bird on a rack set directly over the toast so the fat and trail fall onto it.
- Casserole and Dutch ovenIn 1877 a casserole is a stewpan on the stovetop, not a covered baking dish, and a Dutch oven is the open-fronted tin reflector set beside the fire. Neither means the modern lidded pot.
- TimingThe twenty to thirty minutes is given for the second half of the cooking, after the bird has been half-done and the trail removed; read strictly, that puts the total higher, though the figure may simply be loose. Either way the bird is a small one, about 10-12 oz, and is eaten with the meat still pink at the breastbone; in a very hot oven fifteen to twenty minutes is closer to the mark. Overcooked woodcock turns dry and liverish.
- The baconA thin slice of streaky bacon or barding fat tied over the breast is doing the work of basting on a bird with almost no fat of its own. Untie it for the last few minutes if you want the skin coloured.
- Shalot and the toast spreadShalot is shallot. Half the trail's volume in bacon fat, a spoonful of soft breadcrumb and a teaspoon of chopped shallot is about right for one bird; it should spread like a coarse pâté, not pour.
- Orange gravyAn older sauce of meat gravy sharpened with the juice and shredded peel of a Seville or bitter orange, sometimes with a little port. A sweet navel orange gives quite a different, blunter result.
- YieldOne bird per person, with its own round of toast and a quarter of lemon.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and took its name from Kettner's, the Soho restaurant then in its prime, and the woodcock entry shows the book at its most characteristic: verse, opinion and gastronomic ranking crowded around a few lines of actual method. The insistence that the bird is "never drawn" reflects a long-standing European conviction that woodcock and snipe, which feed on worms and void their gut readily, need no cleaning, and that the trail spread on toast is the best of the bird — a view still held in game cookery today. The migration Dallas describes is real enough: Eurasian woodcock breeding in Scandinavia and Russia arrive in Britain from late autumn and leave in early spring, with a smaller resident population that breeds there, which is why the bird was a winter luxury rather than a year-round one. The couplet comparing woodcock thighs to partridge breast circulated widely in sporting and dining literature of the period and is best treated as traditional rather than traceable to any one author.