No. 2164

Baked Thrushes

Grives au Gratin

Have some well-cleaned thrushes, bone keeping on the legs; season the meats, and in each bird set a ball of forcemeat made with quenelle forcemeat (No. 91), and foies-gras from a terrine, half of each. Truss and fry in butter with a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; drain off the butter, moisten with a little Madeira and stock (No. 194a), and reduce the moisture entirely while cooking slowly. Range a layer of game quenelle forcemeat mixed with cooked fine herbs (No. 385) on a dish; this layer should be seven inches in diameter by three-quarters of an inch high; place the dish on a baking-pan containing a little boiling water and poach the forcemeat in a slack oven. Dress the thrushes on this forcemeat, the breasts lying toward the outer edge and the legs in the center; cover the birds with well reduced veloute sauce (No. 415) into which mix a little game glaze (No. 398), and cooked fine herbs (No. 385); bestrew with parmesan, pour over melted butter, and brown in a hot oven or salamander (Fig. 123). Serve separately a veloute sauce (No. 415) reduced with white wine and mushroom essence (No. 392).

← No. 2163 Thrushes a la Bianca Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2165 Thrushes in the Saucepan →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's gratin of thrushes belongs to a nineteenth-century Delmonico's kitchen with a game larder that no longer legally exists. The technique is instructive; the main ingredient is not obtainable.

The birds are protectedThrushes — including robins, which are thrushes — are migratory songbirds protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, where killing, possessing, buying or selling them is an offence and there is no legal commercial supply. In Europe wild birds are broadly protected under the Birds Directive, though several thrush species remain huntable in some member states under quota. Cook a current recipe written for farmed game birds instead.
Songbird trapping is the specific problemSmall birds for the table were historically taken with lime-twigs and nets set on migration routes, methods that catch whatever passes and are banned precisely because they are indiscriminate. Nothing in the dish itself is chemically unsafe; the prohibition is on the ingredient and how it is obtained.
"Au gratin" here means the finish, not a casseroleIn Ranhofer's vocabulary a gratin is the browned crust: sauce, parmesan and melted butter passed under high heat. The dish is assembled on a shallow platter, not baked in a deep dish.
The salamanderThe tool named at Figure 123 is the period salamander: an iron plate heated in the fire and held over the food to glaze it. A modern broiler at its highest setting is its descendant, browning from above.
"Slack oven"Slack is the coolest working heat in the period's scale, roughly 250-300F — deliberate for a forcemeat poached over a water bath, which must set without puffing or weeping.
The cross-referenced numbersNos. 91, 385, 392, 398, 415 and 194a are separate recipes elsewhere in the book: quenelle forcemeat, cooked fine herbs, mushroom essence, game glaze, veloute and stock. The Epicurean is built as a system, and no single entry is self-contained.
Foies-gras from a terrineRanhofer means cooked, seasoned foie gras taken from a preserved terrine, not raw lobe. The recipe calls for it and the quenelle forcemeat half and half, worked into a ball set inside each bird.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters document an American market that sold songbirds by the dozen — thrushes, reedbirds, ortolans, plover — alongside quail and woodcock. Small-bird cookery came to that market from France and Italy, where thrushes taken on autumn migration were a seasonal delicacy and are still eaten legally in a few places under tightly limited quotas. The commercial trade in the United States collapsed after the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which together ended market hunting of non-game birds; recipes like this one survive mainly as evidence of what a first-class restaurant kitchen could buy before that. The construction — birds boned but left with legs on, set breast-out in a wheel on a poached forcemeat base, glazed with veloute and parmesan — is high-service plating.