No. 2162

Thrushes Andrieux

Grives Andrieux

A bird similar to the blackbird with speckled plumage; its meat is very succulent. Bone the the backs of eight well-cleaned thrushes, leaving on the breastbone and legs; season the meats and fill the insides with game quenelle forcemeat (No. 91), and cooked fine herbs (No. 385). Enclose the dressing, sew and truss the birds for an entree (No. 178). Line a low saucepan with bards of fat pork, put over bottomless oval molds three inches long, two wide and half an inch high, place a thrush in each of these rings. Cut up some ham, veal, carrots and onions in three-eighths of an inch squares, place them around the birds, also a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, cover with a round piece of strong buttered paper, moisten with a little stock (No. 194a) and Madeira and reduce the liquid till dry, then remoisten with broth and let boil. Close well the saucepan and push it into a moderate oven, leaving it there until the birds are nearly done, then untruss and glaze to a fine color; return them to another saucepan with a little braise stock to keep hot until ready to serve. Prepare some croustades with foundation paste (No. 135); in oval molds three and a quarter inches long, two and an eighth wide and three-quarters of an inch high. Strain the stock, skim off the fat and reduce with the same quantity of espagnole sauce (No. 414), and a gill of good Madeira into which has been infused a piece of Ceylon cinnamon; take a third part of this sauce to serve separately at the same time as the thrush and to the other two-thirds add some truffles and escalops of cooked duck's liver; fill the croustades with this, drain the birds, glaze over and lay them on top, then serve.

← No. 2161 Sand Snipe Roasted with Water-Cress Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2163 Thrushes a la Bianca →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a Delmonico's kitchen exercise built on a bird that can no longer legally be bought, sold, or shot in the United States or most of Europe. The notes below explain the obstacle and gloss the terms for readers working through Ranhofer's cross-references.

The bird is protectedThrushes — including the American robin, which is a thrush — are covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it unlawful to take, possess, sell, or serve them. The bird itself cannot be sourced legally in the United States, and commercial sale of wild songbirds is likewise prohibited across the European Union, though hunting of certain thrush species remains legal in several member states.
No commercial substitute existed then eitherRanhofer's thrushes came through the wild-game trade that supplied New York restaurants in the 1890s, when market hunting of songbirds was still largely legal and lucrative. That trade is what the 1916 convention and the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act were written to end, and there is no farmed equivalent to fall back on.
If you want the dish, use a current recipeThe structure — boned bird stuffed with quenelle forcemeat, braised over a ring mold, set on a pastry croustade with a Madeira sauce — belongs to a whole family of small-game preparations. A modern recipe for farmed quail will get you there without the legal problem.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Ranhofer uses the term throughout for wine and stock measures.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of pork back fat used to line the pan and shield lean meat. Fatback or unsmoked pork belly fat is the closest thing on a modern counter; the point is insulation and basting, not flavor.
Bottomless oval moldsPlain metal rings with no base, set on the barded pan bottom so each bird sits upright and holds its shape through the braise. Tart rings of the same footprint do the same job.
A moderate ovenRoughly 350F by modern reckoning; Ranhofer gives no temperature. The pan is sealed and the liquid has already been reduced dry and remoistened with broth, so this stage is a gentle braise rather than a roast.
Duck's liver escalopsThin slices of cooked duck liver, most likely fattened liver (foie gras). Ranhofer treats it as a garnish component rather than a spread, folded into the sauce with truffle to fill the croustades.
The two-thirds and one-third splitThe sauce is divided: two-thirds, garnished with truffle and liver, fills the pastry case; the remaining third is sent to the table separately in a sauceboat. Ranhofer gives no reason for the division.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters read as an inventory of what the nineteenth-century market hunter could deliver to a city restaurant — snipe, woodcock, plover, reed birds, and thrushes by the dozen. Eating small thrushes is old in Europe: the Romans kept them in fattening houses, and the practice survived into the French and Italian countryside, where the birds were traditionally taken in autumn when fat on berries. The origin of Ranhofer's suffix "Andrieux" is unknown; like the many other surnames scattered through the book, it may honour a chef, a patron, or the originator of a dish, and he attaches such names freely and rarely explains them. The recipe's real historical interest is what it documents about scale — a menu that could call for eight boned thrushes as a single entrée assumed a supply of wild songbirds that American conservation law deliberately shut down within a generation of this book's publication.