No. 2154

Snipe-English-a la Montaland

Becassines Anglaises a la Montaland

Truss twelve very clean snipe, roast them on the spit or in the oven, leaving them quite rare; lift off the breasts. Fry the intestines and livers in butter, season with salt and pepper; cut off all the leg meats and pound them with the fried intestines, then press through a sieve. Reduce half a pint of champagne with two finely minced shallots, also some truffles, mushrooms, chopped parsley, mignonette and a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414), add to it the pounded meats, a spoonful of olive oil and the juice of a lemon. Dress the snipe on half heart croutons covered with foies-gras, and pour the sauce over.

← No. 2153 Snipe-English-African Style Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2155 Snipe-English-a la Waleski →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen worked with wild snipe brought in by market gunners, undrawn, and with a brigade to do the pounding and sieving. The dish still works, but almost every step needs translating.

Sourcing the birdsWild snipe cannot legally be sold in the United States; the birds must come from a licensed hunter in season, and in Britain snipe are quarry only between 12 August and 31 January. Farmed quail (two per person) or squab are the practical substitutes, though neither has the strong, slightly liverish flavor the sauce is built around.
Lead shotAny bird taken with lead shot should be checked carefully before the meat is pounded and sieved, and the sieving step will not catch fragments reliably. Steel- or bismuth-shot birds are the safer choice for a preparation that purees the flesh.
"Quite rare"Snipe are tiny, roughly three to four ounces, and cook in a matter of minutes in a very hot oven; Ranhofer gives no temperature or time, so any figures are a modern reconstruction. He wants the breasts pink at the bone; wild birds can carry campylobacter and salmonella as domestic poultry does, so this is a deliberate risk taken for texture, and worth knowing before you take it.
The intestinesSnipe and woodcock are traditionally cooked undrawn, the "trail" counted a delicacy. Here it is fried in butter with the livers and pounded into the sauce base, so it is cooked, but the gizzard should still be removed and discarded.
MeasuresRanhofer is writing in American measures: half a pint of champagne is one cup, a pint of espagnole is two cups. Mignonette is coarsely cracked white or black pepper, not the shallot-vinegar sauce the word means today.
EspagnoleHis No. 414 is a brown sauce built on stock and thickened with brown roux, long-simmered; read the original entry for his own garnish. A well-reduced brown veal or game stock, lightly bound, gets you to the same place; a jarred demi-glace diluted to two cups is the shortcut.
Pounding and sievingMortar and tamis can be replaced by a small food processor followed by a drum sieve or fine chinois. The sieving is not optional; leg meat and offal carry sinew that will make the sauce gritty.
FinishingThe olive oil and lemon juice go in off the heat, after the reduction is complete. Boiling the sauce afterwards dulls the lemon and can break the emulsion the oil forms.
YieldTwelve snipe, dressed two to a plate on heart-shaped croutons spread with foie gras, serves six as a course. Fry the croutons in clarified butter and spread them just before serving so the foie gras does not melt into the bread.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters are a portrait of an era when wild birds were commercial goods: barrels of snipe, plover and canvasback arrived from market gunners on the Chesapeake and the Jersey meadows and appeared on restaurant menus by the dozen. "English snipe" was the common American name for Wilson's snipe, distinguishing it from the woodcock; the birds were sold undrawn, since the trail was considered the best of them. Names like a la Montaland, a la Waleski and the rest were house designations honoring patrons and performers of the day, and Ranhofer rarely explains them; the attribution is generally traced to the theatrical and society circles Delmonico's fed, but the specific person behind this one is not documented in the book. The trade the dish depended on was closed off over the decades that followed: the Lacey Act of 1900 restricted interstate traffic in illegally taken game, and the market was not effectively shut until the Weeks-McLean Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1913-1918, which is why a recipe calling for twelve snipe now reads as a historical document rather than an order.