No. 2160

Snipe Stuffed, Bordelaise

Becassines Farcies, Bordelaise

Clean the birds well, draw, remove the gizzard and pouch and chop up the intestines, mix in with them as much grated fat pork, some parsley, chives, salt and pepper; fill the snipe with this dressing and roast them in the oven; dress them on hollowed out bread crusts fried in butter and filled with marrow Bordelaise (No. 436).

← No. 2159 Snipe, English, Roasted Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2161 Sand Snipe Roasted with Water-Cress →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer assumes a cook who has handled game birds all week and needs no times, temperatures or quantities. Here is what the entry leaves out.

The trail is the pointThe gizzard and the pouch (crop) come out; everything else — the intestines and their contents — is chopped and becomes the stuffing. This is deliberate, not squeamish economy: snipe and woodcock feed on soft invertebrates and their trail is prized as the most flavourful part of the bird. If the idea does not appeal, the dish is not worth making in another form.
Sourcing the birdsSnipe are migratory game birds. In the United States they cannot lawfully be bought or sold, so the only source is a hunter's gift. In the United Kingdom snipe are a quarry species and may be sold in season by game dealers. Quail, which are farmed and sold dressed, are the usual stand-in, though they come drawn and so cannot supply the trail.
Grated fat porkUnsmoked fatback or fresh (unsalted) pork fat, frozen firm and grated on the coarse side of a box grater. Salt pork will work if soaked and the added salt reduced. Smoked bacon is wrong here — it buries the bird.
Oven and timingThe entry gives no temperature or time. A hot oven, around 450F, suits small birds; snipe want roughly 8 to 12 minutes, quail 12 to 15, with the breast left rosy. Cooked through, these birds turn dry and livery within a minute or two, so pull them early and let them rest.
Marrow Bordelaise, No. 436The cross-reference is to the book's marrow bordelaise. In the usual form this is beef marrow soaked to purge blood, poached gently until just translucent, then diced and bound with a bordelaise — red wine reduced with shallot, finished with demi-glace. Marrow that boils renders to nothing, so keep the water below a shiver.
The croustadesCut crustless bread into blocks a little wider than a bird, hollow the tops, and fry in clarified butter until gold on all sides. Whole butter burns before the bread colours evenly at the heat required.
YieldTwo snipe per person as a course, one if the dish follows a substantial roast. In classic service the game course came late in a long menu, which may argue for the single bird.

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 read as an inventory of what American markets still sold before the Lacey Act of 1900 and later migratory-bird treaties ended the commercial trade in wild snipe, woodcock and plover. A la bordelaise in this book means, as it usually did in nineteenth-century French kitchens, beef marrow with a red-wine and shallot sauce — the association with Bordeaux is generally traced to the region's wine rather than to any single Bordelais dish. Keeping the trail in a snipe or woodcock is older than either: the birds were traditionally roasted undrawn, on toast set beneath to catch what fell, and Ranhofer's version simply moves that idea inside the bird and pairs it with a marrow-filled croustade in place of the plain toast.