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Reed-Birds a La Lindenthorpe
"On 'Ladies Day' the members of the Lindenthorpe Club are more particular than on 'members' day.' They prepare the reed-birds by drawing the trail and removing the heads; they then take large sweet or Irish potatoes, cut them in two, scoop out the insides, and put an oyster or small piece of bacon inside of each bird, and put the birds inside the potato, tie them up with twine, and bake until the potatoes are done. The common twine is then removed and the potatoes are tied with a narrow piece of white or colored tape, in a neat bowknot, and sent to the table on a napkin."
This "receipt" was written by Thomas J. Murrey, an American Savarin, who, before 1880, when our restaurant cooking was in the frying-pan doldrums, distinguished himself not only as caterer extraordinary to the Astor House and Rossmore Hotel of New York, and the old Continental of Philadelphia, but wrote intelligently and enticingly about food besides.
In 1880, Thomas Murrey published a really original volume of "Valuable Cooking Receipts" in paper covers and it wasn't just another rehash of other folks hashes. He stuffed it with apt and appetizing literary allusions; garnishing his Lettuce Francaise for instance, with Sydney Smith's: "Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl."
An ad lib, spontaneous, creative outdoor cook at heart, as you'll see by Murrey's "B'iled Taters" quoted elsewhere in this book.
The bird at the center of this dish cannot legally be taken or served in the United States, and the method as written also depends on a bake time governed entirely by the potato rather than the meat.
- Reed-bird means bobolink"Reed-bird" was the market name for the bobolink, shot by the thousand in East Coast rice and reed marshes in the nineteenth century. It is a songbird protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and killing, possessing, or serving one is a federal offense. There is no legal source for the main ingredient.
- No substitution is impliedSmall game birds sold legally today (quail, squab) cook on entirely different schedules and do not fit the proportions here. If you want a bird baked in a scooped potato, work from a current recipe written for a bird you can lawfully buy.
- The doneness cue is the potatoThe instruction is to bake "until the potatoes are done," which tells you nothing about the interior of a whole small bird stuffed with an oyster or raw bacon. Poultry and shellfish both need a verified internal temperature; a soft potato is not that verification.
- Sweet or Irish potato"Irish potato" is simply the ordinary white or russet potato, distinguished from the sweet potato in American usage of the period. Murrey offers them as alternatives, which would in practice give very different sweetness and very different baking times.
- Drawing the trail"Drawing the trail" means removing the intestine. Small birds of this kind were often cooked undrawn, trail and all, and the recipe's own note that the club is "more particular" on Ladies Day suggests the drawing and beheading are a concession to genteel taste rather than a technical improvement.
- The tapeThe cotton twine is structural and the narrow tape is presentation, swapped in after baking; the recipe gives no reason for the change, only that the potatoes go to the table tied in a neat bowknot on a napkin.