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Woodcocks in Croustades
Singe and bone some woodcocks and sprinkle them inwardly with pepper and salt. Break the back and bones into small pieces, put them in a stewpan with a lump of butter, and fry them over a clear fire till browned, and then cover them with white wine and broth and let simmer for twenty minutes. Strain the liquor off the bones into another stewpan, boil it till reduced to half glaze, then thicken it with two or three tablespoonfuls of sauce. Put the trails of the woodcocks and five or six chickens' livers in a fryingpan with some bacon fat and fry them quickly; add salt and pepper, leave till cool, then pound them in a mortar with half their quantity of chopped bacon and the same of panada. Mix four tablespoonfuls of chopped raw truffles with the above mixture and stuff the birds with it, roll one bird to a round shape and the remainder to an oval shape, fastening them securely with twine. Place two or three rashers of bacon and some sliced vegetables, such as carrots, turnips and onions, at the bottom of a stewpan, put in the birds, sprinkle a little salt over them, pour in to half their height some white wine and broth mixed in equal quantities, put the lid on the pan and braise the birds. Cut as many small croustades of bread as there are birds, shaping one round and the rest oval, make a cut round on the upper surface with the point of a knife, and fry them in fat till nicely browned. When done, drain, scoop them out, and spread a thin layer of game quenelle forcemeat all over the insides. Put the croustades in the oven and bake them till the forcemeat has set. When done, fit the birds in the bread cases and pour the sauce over them. Arrange the croustades on an ornamental dish-paper that has been placed on a hot dish, putting the oval-shaped ones all round and the round one in the center, and serve while hot. Woodcocks, Minute Style Put three ounces of butter in a small fryingpan over a good fire, add some shred shallots, a little pepper and salt, and grated nutmeg; when the butter is quite hot put a brace of woodcocks into the pan, fry them for seven or eight minutes, and add a tablespoonful of white wine, the strained juice of two lemons, and some raspings of crusts of bread; let the woodcocks remain in the pan till the sauce has boiled up once, then put the birds on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them and serve at once.
Woodcocks, Perigueux Truss some woodcocks, put them in a stewpan with thin slices of fat bacon on top, pour in one pint of mirepoix and one-half pint of Madeira, and cook over a slow fire. Boil some perigueux sauce together with the extract of woodcocks till reduced. When done, drain the birds, put them on a hot dish, strain the sauce over them, and serve.
Three woodcock preparations from the Waldorf's game repertoire, written for a brigade that had stock, forcemeat and sauces already standing. The croustade version is a half-day project; the "minute style" is genuinely quick.
- Sourcing the birdsWoodcock is a migratory game bird and cannot legally be sold in the United States; the only lawful source is a licensed hunter in season. British and European rules differ, and woodcock may be sold legally in Britain during the open season. Farmed quail is the usual stand-in (wild snipe is under the same US sale restriction as woodcock), though neither has woodcock's flavour.
- The trailsThe "trail" is the bird's intestine, traditionally left in and eaten because woodcock have no crop and feed on earthworms. Here it is fried hard with chicken livers before being pounded into the stuffing, which is the only form in which it should be used. Undercooked offal from wild birds is not worth the risk.
- PanadaA binding paste of bread or flour cooked with milk or stock until it forms a stiff mass, cooled before use. Roughly equal weight bread to liquid; it is what keeps the pounded liver stuffing from turning grainy.
- Half glazeThe strained liquor from the bones, wine and broth, boiled down to a demi-glace consistency, short of the syrupy glaze stage. The 'two or three tablespoonfuls of sauce' that thicken it would be espagnole or demi-glace from the day's stockpot; a well-reduced brown veal stock does the same work.
- Mirepoix, 1900 sense"Pour in one pint of mirepoix" is not a pint of diced vegetables. In this period mirepoix also meant the aromatic braising liquid made from those vegetables cooked with wine and stock, which is what is called for in the Perigueux version.
- Perigueux sauceDemi-glace finished with chopped black truffle and Madeira, named for the Dordogne town at the centre of the truffle trade. The recipe reduces it further with the woodcock braising liquor, so keep the initial seasoning light.
- RaspingsDried crusts grated to a coarse crumb. In the minute-style dish they thicken the pan sauce and absorb the lemon juice; fine dry breadcrumbs work, panko does not.
- Braising and oven heatThe recipe specifies neither temperature nor time. Braise the stuffed birds covered in a moderate oven until the liver forcemeat is cooked through (165F if you are checking), and give the scooped croustades a short spell in a hotter oven, only long enough to set their lining of quenelle forcemeat.
- Timing on the minute styleSeven or eight minutes in hot butter suits small birds cooked pink, as woodcock traditionally is. If you are substituting quail and want them cooked through, expect longer and check the thigh.
- YieldOne bird per person in all three preparations. In the croustade version one case is shaped round and set in the centre of the platter, with the oval ones arranged around it.
Oscar Tschirky was never formally the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel — but the book that carries his name, a compilation as much as anything else, gives a sense of what the hotel's kitchens were serving around 1896, and game birds were near the top of the menu's prestige. Woodcock, la bécasse, was the most admired of them in the French tradition Oscar's kitchen followed: a bird small enough to be a single portion, cooked undrawn, its trail spread on toast or worked into a farce as it is here. The Perigueux version points straight at Escoffier-era classical practice, where a demi-glace finished with Dordogne truffle was the standard dress for anything considered noble. The whole croustade construction — birds boned, restuffed with their own trail, set in fried bread cases lined with quenelle forcemeat and arranged around a central round one on a paper doily — belongs to a style of service that assumed a large brigade and a dining room that expected to be shown something. American market hunting collapsed the wild bird supply within a generation of this book, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, following the 1916 treaty and preceded by the Lacey Act of 1900 and Weeks-McLean of 1913, ended the commercial trade for good, which is why a dish that was once a hotel standard is now something only a hunter can put on the table.