No. 2205

Woodcocks on Canapes a la Perigord

Becasses sur Canapes a la Perigord

Prepare some bread croutons three and three-quarter inches long, two and a quarter inches wide and half an inch thick; cut off the four corners and empty an oblong square on each side one and three-quarters inch long by one inch wide; from each side of the middle remove a half circle an inch in diameter; hollow out the center so that when the bird is dressed it can stand upright on it; fry these in butter and empty the slit. Chop up some woodcock intestines with as much grated fat pork and as much chicken liver, season with salt and pepper and add chopped parsley, a little game glaze (No. 398) and a few egg-yolks, fill the hollowed out spaces on each end of the crouton (Fig. 41) with this, forming it into dome shape on top and push into the oven with butter poured over. Cook some pieces of truffle with grated fat pork, salt, pepper and fine spices (No. 168) and have it get cold. First begin by picking, singeing and cleaning the birds well; withdraw the gizzard, pouch and intestines; stuff the birds with the truffles and truss well for roasting and inserting the beak into the breast aperture; wrap in thin slices of fat pork, tying on with three rounds of string; roast for ten minutes and dress on the center of the croutons; serve these with a Madeira half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with essence of truffles (No. 395).

← No. 2204 Broiled Woodcocks Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2206 Woodcocks Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a larder full of cross-referenced preparations, so most of the work here is assembling components he assumes are already made. The hinge is the roasting: ten minutes is deliberate, and the bird is meant to come out rare with the trail paste doing the seasoning work.

Sourcing the birdsWoodcock is a migratory game bird and cannot legally be sold in the United States; it reaches a kitchen only through a licensed hunter, and in much of Europe it is a restricted seasonal shoot. Quail or squab is the usual stand-in, though neither has the strong liver-and-iron flavor the dish is built around.
The trailWoodcock is traditionally drawn only of gizzard and pouch, with the intestines (the "trail") kept for forcemeat. Ranhofer does withdraw the intestines here, but they are chopped with fat pork and chicken liver and returned to the dish on the crouton, and that paste goes into the oven rather than being served raw.
Fat porkMost likely fresh unsalted pork back fat rather than bacon, though nineteenth-century translations use "fat pork" loosely and salted fat is sometimes meant. If only salt pork is available, blanch and dry it before grating or slicing, or the barding may oversalt the breast.
Roasting heatRanhofer gives no oven temperature; a roast of this kind implies a hot oven, and ten minutes will leave a woodcock rare to the bone, which appears to be the intention. Anyone uneasy with rare game bird should cook something else rather than extend the time, since a woodcock cooked through is dry and livery.
The croutonsRead the dimensions as a template rather than a rule: about 3 3/4" x 2 1/4" x 1/2", corners trimmed, a well hollowed in the center so the trussed bird stands upright on it, and a raised dome of trail forcemeat at each end. "Empty the slit" comes after frying -- clear the crumb out of the cuts. Fry in clarified butter so they do not scorch.
The cross-referencesNo. 398 is game glaze (reduced game stock, near-syrupy), No. 168 a fine-spice mixture of the quatre-epices type, No. 413 a Madeira demi-glace, and No. 395 truffle essence. A good reduced Madeira demi-glace finished with truffle juice covers the last two adequately.
TrufflesThe stuffing truffles are cooked with grated fat pork and spice, then chilled before going into the cavity, so they perfume the bird from within during its short roast. Preserved truffles in juice work; the juice belongs in the sauce.
YieldOne bird and one crouton per person, served as a course rather than a main plate. Everything except the roasting can be done ahead; the birds go straight from oven to crouton to table.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years running the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like an inventory of what a first-class American restaurant of the Gilded Age could put on a plate. Woodcock was among the most prized game birds of that era's menus, valued precisely for the trail, which cooks kept rather than discarded on what was often said to be the reasoning that the bird feeds on worms and is otherwise clean inside. The tag a la Perigord is the standard nineteenth-century French shorthand for a dish built on black truffle, after Perigord, a historical region roughly corresponding to the Dordogne, though the bulk of the French truffle trade came largely from Provence and the Vaucluse under the Perigord name; it appears throughout the classical repertoire attached to everything from sauces to garnished poultry. The elaborately carved crouton is characteristic of the period's service, when a bird was expected to arrive upright and composed on its own edible pedestal, and it also served the practical end of catching the juices that the short, hot roast drove out.</p>