No. 2122

Bustard Plovers a la Dumanoir

Vanneaux a la Dumanoir

Chop up the intestines of several bustard plovers with as much grated fat, pork, pound and press through a sieve, add fine spices and chopped truffle parings, mixing in a little brandy and a soupcon of garlic. Truss the plovers as for roasting (No.179), stuff them with the above preparation and roast in a hot oven. Dress them when done on hollow oval bread croutons. Glaze them over with game glaze (No.398), pour a little gravy in the bottom of the dish and serve separately a small quantity of half-glaze sauce (No.413) with Madeira.

← No. 2121 Salmis of Yellow—Leg Plovers a la Duclair Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2123 Quails a la Caprea →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's vanneaux are lapwings, and the dish belongs to a vanished market in wild shorebirds. The notes below explain the terms and why this one stays on the page rather than going into the oven.

The bird is protectedVanneau is the northern lapwing or peewit, a shorebird whose English name Ranhofer renders oddly as "bustard plover." The small plovers sold as game in the 1890s are protected in North America and in Britain, and no substitute is offered here; where lapwing shooting is still permitted in parts of continental Europe, the market trade the recipe assumes is gone.
Market game no longer existsThe recipe assumes a poulterer's counter stocked with wild shorebirds shot in quantity. Commercial hunting and sale of migratory shorebirds ended in the United States with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and nothing comparable is legally available to a cook now.
The trail stuffingSmall game birds of this class were traditionally roasted undrawn, and the trail, the intestines, was pounded with fat and used as forcemeat. It is a real technique, but it depends on a freshly shot wild bird handled within hours; there is no farmed equivalent that behaves the same way.
Cross-referencesThe numbered notes point elsewhere in The Epicurean: No. 179 is Ranhofer's trussing method for roasting, No. 398 a reduced game glaze, No. 413 the half-glaze or demi-glace, here finished with Madeira. None of them can be read from this page alone.
Terms"Truffle parings" are the trimmings left from turning truffles for garnish, sold in tins in period kitchens. A soupçon of garlic means a trace, here mixed into the forcemeat rather than measured. "Hollow oval bread croutons" are bread cases hollowed to seat one bird each.
If you want the ideaThe construction, a strong forcemeat under a fast roast, a fried bread base and a Madeira demi-glace, transfers readily to legally farmed birds, but use a current recipe written for them rather than adapting this one.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after what is usually given as some three decades, though not continuous ones, as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters record a period when wild shorebirds, plovers, snipe, woodcock, reedbirds, were ordinary restaurant stock rather than curiosities. Lapwings had long been prized in France and England, both for the bird and for the eggs, and appeared on grand menus through the nineteenth century. The Dumanoir preparation is a house formula in the classical manner: the bird's own trail worked into a forcemeat with pork fat, truffle trimmings and brandy, the whole set on fried bread and glazed. Within a generation of the book's publication the traffic in wild shorebirds had collapsed under hunting pressure and then been closed by law, which is why an entire section of this cookbook now reads as a document rather than a set of instructions.