No. 2153

Snipe-English-African Style

Becassines Anglaises a l'Africaine

Divide six snipe in two parts, beat, pare and place them in a sautoir with melted butter; cook the intestines and some chicken livers in butter with half as much grated fat pork, two ounces of bread-crumbs and half a pint of half-glaze sauce (No. 413), pass it through a sieve and incorporate into it a few spoonfuls of chopped truffles; fill some hollowed out half heart-shaped croutons with this preparation, cover with slices of fat pork and poach in the oven. Saute the snipe and when done lay on top of the croutons and cover with espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduced with game fumet (No. 397); serve an African sauce (No. 424) separately.

Dowich snipe are prepared the same as English snipe.

← No. 2152 Reed Birds, Roasted Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2154 Snipe-English-a la Montaland →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a full sauce station, so most of the work here is upstream of the snipe itself. The bird takes minutes; the stuffed croutons and the two sauces are the dish.

Sourcing the birdsSnipe cannot legally be bought in the United States; wild game birds are not sold commercially, so they come from a licensed hunter in season. "English snipe" is the old market name for Wilson's snipe. The "Dowich" of the last line is the dowitcher, now fully protected under migratory bird law and not a permissible substitute.
The trailThe "intestines" are the trail, which snipe and woodcock are traditionally drawn with in place, and which carries most of the flavour of the forcemeat. If your birds arrive already gutted, lean harder on the chicken livers; the stuffing will be milder but still works.
Don't overcook the sautéSplit snipe halves in butter want four to six minutes over brisk heat, turned once, with the breast still rosy. Held longer they dry to liver-flavoured string, and no amount of espagnole will rescue them.
Units and vesselsA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow saute pan. Half a pint of half-glaze is one cup of demi-glace. Two ounces of bread-crumbs is by weight, roughly half a cup of dry crumbs (or about a cup of fresh).
Fat porkMost likely fresh unsalted pork fatback, grated into the forcemeat and cut in thin sheets to bard the croutons, though Ranhofer's "fat pork" sometimes means salt pork. If you are using salt pork or bacon the stuffing will turn salty and smoky; blanch it first.
"Poach in the oven"Not poaching in the modern sense: the filled croutons are set gently in a moderate oven until the forcemeat is firm. The book gives no temperature or timing.
The cross-referenced saucesThe Epicurean is a numbered system, and this recipe leans on four other entries: half-glaze (413), espagnole (414), game fumet (397) and African sauce (424). Good demi-glace plus a reduction of the snipe carcasses will stand in for the first three; the African sauce, a piquant derivative whose composition you will need to look up at No. 424, is what gives the dish its name and cannot simply be dropped.
YieldSix snipe make twelve halves; the recipe does not say how many croutons, only "some." Figure six servings as a game course, fewer as a main dish.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the working record of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house habit of stacking national tags onto French technique: an English snipe, cooked in the classic French manner on a stuffed crouton, then served with a sauce a l'Africaine, which in nineteenth-century garnish naming appears to have signalled heat and spice rather than any actual African provenance. Snipe, plover, dowitchers and reed birds were among the shorebirds sold in American markets in the 1880s and 1890s, shot by market hunters and treated as interchangeable small game on restaurant menus. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended that trade, and several of the birds in this chapter of Ranhofer's book can no longer be bought, and in some cases no longer legally taken, at all.