Split the woodcocks lengthwise through the back; open entirely, beat lightly, pare, salt, and coat over with oil; broil them over a brisk fire (for they must be served quite rare) and when done dress them on oval toasts (No. 51); cover entirely with maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581), and serve very hot, surrounding the toast with sliced lemon (No. 113).
Ranhofer assumes a cook who can buy woodcock by the dozen and a broiler fierce enough to sear them in minutes. The method still works; the sourcing and the fire are what need translating.
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 the Gilded Age dining room expected: quail, snipe, plover, reedbirds, woodcock. Woodcock stood near the top of that hierarchy, prized in the French kitchen for its dark, faintly livery flesh and for the trail, which cooks traditionally spread on the toast beneath the bird rather than throwing away. The trade that supplied Delmonico's did not survive the century: commercial market hunting of migratory birds was curtailed in the United States by the Lacey Act of 1900 and effectively ended by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which is why a dish that once needed only a telephone call to the market now needs a hunting licence.