No. 2150

Rail a la Mareille-Roasted and Broiled

Rale Roti et Grille a la Mareille

A species of bird belonging to the grallic order; they are in great demand on account of the delicacy of their meats, especially in the fall season. There are two kinds, the water rail and the land rail; the latter being the best.

A la Mareille.—Pick, draw, singe, and truss six rails, carefully remove all their pin feathers, then stuff them with the following dressing: Chop six ounces of chicken livers with as much fresh fat pork, both to be chopped separately; mix all together, then season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chopped truffles, mushrooms, and parsley; cook in a brisk oven, and afterward dress on hollow crusts fried in butter garnished with forcemeat and poached in the oven; serve a Bigarade sauce (No. 435) separately.

Roasted.—Prepared the same as the above without any dressing; roast in a hot oven, and dress on croutons of bread fried in butter, and covered with foies-gras forcemeat (No. 78); pour clear gravy (No. 404) over, and serve with currant jelly.

Broiled.—Split the rails, cook and dress the same as the English snipe (No. 2157).

← No. 2149 Wild Rabbit Backs, Broiled Other Game No. 2151 Reed Birds, Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a three-in-one entry from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, and its central ingredient is the problem: rails are migratory birds that cannot lawfully be bought, and the "land rail" the text prefers is a protected species. The notes below explain the barriers rather than route around them.

The land rail is the corncrakeWhat nineteenth-century cooks called the land rail is Crex crex, the corncrake, now a bird of serious conservation concern and legally protected across Britain, Ireland and the European Union. Taking, killing or possessing one is an offence; there is no season and no market.
Water rails are not sold eitherIn the United States the rail family falls under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. A few species (sora, Virginia, clapper, king) have narrow regulated hunting seasons in some states, but the sale of wild-taken migratory game birds is prohibited outright, so six dressed rails cannot be legally purchased anywhere. Ranhofer was writing in an era when Fulton Market sold wild game by the barrel.
Raw pork and liver forcemeat in a small birdThe stuffing is uncooked chicken liver and fresh fat pork packed into the cavity of a small bird. The recipe gives no cooking time, no doneness cue and no internal check, so there is nothing in the text to confirm the pork or liver ever reaches a safe temperature.
If you want the dishUse a current recipe built around a legally farmed bird, from a source that gives you cooking times and internal temperatures for a stuffed bird.
Reading the cross-referencesThe numbered sauces are elsewhere in the same book: No. 435 is bigarade, an orange-based brown sauce; No. 404 is a clear roast gravy; No. 78 is a foie-gras forcemeat.
The croustadesThe "hollow crusts fried in butter" are simply bread cases hollowed out and browned in butter, then filled with forcemeat and set in the oven to firm. That part of the technique survives intact in classic garnishes and needs no adjustment.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) records what Charles Ranhofer actually cooked during his decades at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters are a catalogue of how much wilder the American market once was: reed birds, plover, wild rabbit and rails all had a price and a season. Rails were shot in the tidal marshes around New York and Philadelphia in early autumn, when the birds were fattest, and the sport of pushing a skiff through wild rice at high tide to flush sora was a well-documented September ritual along the Delaware. The name "rail" comes through French râle, and the "grallic order" of the headnote is the old Linnaean grouping Grallae, the waders. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the commercial trade in birds like these; the corncrake's collapse came later and had more to do with mechanised hay mowing than with the table. Ranhofer's "à la Mareille" garnish has no securely documented origin, and the name does not appear in the standard French repertory outside this book.