Snipe
Cook snipe like its bigger brother, the woodcock. It does not need to be trussed. The trail (insides) is sometimes chopped, mixed with bread crumbs and beaten egg, spread on toast and browned before the grill, to become the final resting place of the little bird when cooked. Unlike other birds, the legs of both snipe and woodcock are considered the best parts.
If there are not enough birds to go around, and you have an oven, make a gamey pie, thus:
An instruction rather than a formula: snipe is treated exactly as woodcock, roasted hot and fast, with the trail worked into a savoury spread beneath the bird. A few period terms need translating before you start.
- "Grill" hereIn outdoor and older kitchen writing the grill is the gridiron over coals, or the broiler in a range — heat from above or below, not a modern gas grill lid. Browning the trail toast means putting it close under or over that heat for a minute or two until it sets and colours.
- Heat and timeSnipe is a very small bird, only a few ounces once dressed. The recipe gives no temperature or timing; period practice for snipe and woodcock is a short turn at high heat, whether on a spit close to the fire or in a hot oven. Anything longer dries the breast to nothing, which is why the recipe is a paragraph and not a page.
- DonenessTraditional practice serves snipe and woodcock rare, and the older books assume it. Current food-safety guidance for all wild game birds is 165F at the thickest part of the breast, and wild birds can carry salmonella and campylobacter. Decide which standard you are cooking to before the bird goes near the fire.
- "The trail"The intestines and associated viscera, kept in the bird by tradition because snipe and woodcock have clean, largely earthworm-and-insect diets. If you are squeamish or the birds have been long dead, draw them and make the toast with the liver and heart alone. The gizzard is usually removed.
- Not trussedThe legs are so short and the body so compact that string does nothing but slow you down. The long bill is often used as a skewer through the thighs in old game cookery, which serves the same purpose.
- Plucking, not skinningThe skin carries most of the fat on a bird this lean. Dry-pluck rather than skin, and singe off the remaining down over a flame.
- YieldAllow two birds per person as a course, one if it sits on toast alongside other game. A single snipe is a mouthful or two of breast plus the legs.