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Fillets of Woodcock in Surprise
Roast some woodcock in a hot oven, keeping them rather underdone. When cooked cut the fillets carefully off the breasts of the woodcocks, cover each with chicken forcemeat, and let them simmer in some stock for ten or twelve minutes. Put as many dressed cockscombs as there are fillets in a little stock, and warm them. Put a border of mashed potatoes on a hot dish, arrange the fillets, and cockscombs alternately on them, pour over some veloute game-sauce and serve.
Fillets of Woodcocks, Lucullus Singe and draw some birds, fix them on a spit and roast, keeping them rather underdone. Make about one-half pound of chicken forcemeat, take the fillets off the birds, spread them over with the forcemeat, brush over with beaten egg, lay them in a buttered sautepan, pour in sufficient white stock to cover them, and boil gently for a few minutes. Chop the flesh off the legs and the trails, put it in a mortar, pound and pass through a fine hair-sieve. Put the pounded meat in a saucepan with one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of game-sauce (which can be made from the bones of the birds) and boil it till thick, move the sauce to the side of the fire and stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs. Arrange the fillets of woodcocks in a circle on a hot dish, alternating each with a crouton of fried bread pour the sauce in the middle of the dish, and serve.
Fillets of Woodcock on Toast Separate the fillets from the bones of some woodcocks, trim them neatly, season with salt and pepper, and brush over with warmed butter. Chop the trails of the birds and mix them with some chopped parsley, shallots and scraped bacon, and season the mixture with salt and pepper. Cut some crusts of bread longer than the fillets, make some deep slits down the edges, fry them in butter, then scoop out the crumb. Fill the crusts with the chopped trail mixture and bake them. Put the fillets of woodcocks in a fryingpan with some butter and fry them. Mix some meat glaze with some stock that should have been made with the pounded carcass of the birds. When cooked place the crusts on a hot dish, put a fillet on each crust, and serve them with the sauce in a sauceboat.
Fillets of Woodcock with Truffle Puree Separate the fillets from the bones of the birds, trim and put them in a fryingpan, season with a little salt and pepper, and baste with a little warmed butter. Stud each of the minion fillets with a small square of truffle, lay them in a bakingdish with a small lump of butter, cover with a sheet of buttered paper, and bake in the oven. Fry the large fillets over a moderate fire. Fix a croustade in the center of a hot dish and fill it with truffle puree. Arrange the large fillets when cooked in a circle round the croustade, then place the minion fillets around them. Pour over the fillets some essence of woodcocks that have been mixed with a small quantity of half glaze, and serve then.
Four variations on the same idea, printed as one run-on block. All of them assume a kitchen with a spit, a mortar, and a game larder — and a bird that no longer reaches restaurants.
- Woodcock is no longer a market birdMigratory game birds cannot legally be sold in the United States, so woodcock reaches a kitchen only through a hunter. Farmed quail or squab handle the same treatments; quail breasts are the closest in size, though neither has the strong liver-like flavor that these dishes are built around.
- "Trails" means the entrailsWoodcock was traditionally roasted undrawn, and the trail — the intestine, with the liver — was the prized part, spread on toast. The second and third variations depend on it for their sauce and their stuffing. If you are working with drawn birds, use the livers and hearts instead and expect a milder result.
- Oven and heatThe book gives no temperatures; a "hot oven" would correspond to somewhere around 425-450F. Small birds roast in roughly 10-15 minutes at that heat; "rather underdone" means the breast is still rosy, since it will be poached again in stock afterward.
- The hinge: the egg-yolk liaisonIn the Lucullus version the pounded leg meat and game sauce are boiled thick, then moved off the fire before the yolks go in. Do not let it come back to a boil — the yolks will scramble and the sauce will break into grains. Hold it below 180°F and serve it at once.
- Breakfast cupfulsA breakfast cup is a large cup, roughly 8-10 fluid ounces. One and a half of them is about 12 to 15 fluid ounces of game sauce; the quantity matters less than reducing it until it coats a spoon before the yolks go in.
- CockscombsThe combs of roosters, blanched, skinned and simmered until gelatinous — a standard garnish in the grand-hotel repertoire and effectively gone from Western kitchens. "Dressed" means already cleaned and cooked. Poached small mushroom caps or blanched sweetbread pieces fill the same decorative role.
- Minion fillets and croustadesThe "minion fillets" are the small strips lying under each breast, the equivalent of filets mignons on a beef loin. A croustade is a hollowed, fried or baked bread or pastry case used as a stand for the garnish, not something eaten as pastry.
- YieldEach bird yields two small breast fillets, so count two birds per person for a course and scale the forcemeat accordingly — half a pound of chicken forcemeat is enough to coat eight to ten fillets.
Woodcock was, for nineteenth-century restaurant cooking, the most flattering bird on the list: small, dark, intensely flavored, and eaten with its trail. That prestige is why Oscar Tschirky's book can afford four separate treatments of the fillets alone, one of them named for Lucullus, the Roman general whose name had by then become shorthand on menus for extravagance rather than for any particular dish. The recipes belong to the era when American hotels still bought wild game by the barrel from market hunters; the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended that trade, and with it this whole branch of the menu. What survives here is the method memeat, poach briefly, and build a sauce from the pounded carcass and trail oa Waldorf kitchen got three preparations out of one small bird.