No. 2207

Salmis of Woodcocks a la Beaumont

Salmis de Becasses a la Beaumont

Roast five whole woodcocks, remove the intestines and cut each bird into five pieces, suppress all the skin and lay them in a sautoir. Pound the parings and carcasses, place the puree in a saucepan with three finely cut up shallots and a bunch of parsley garnished with a bay leaf. Moisten with a pint and a half of red or white wine or else champagne according to taste; reduce to half, then add a pint of espagnole (No. 414); let simmer on the side of the range for half an hour, being careful to remove all vestige of fat and scum as fast as it arises to the surface; pass the sauce through a tammy and reduce it to the consistency of a light one, adding some peeled and cut up truffles or mushrooms, or even both. Dress the woodcock on a dish and surround with the truffles or mushrooms; garnish around with hollow crusts filled with the intestines, as much chicken liver and half as much grated fat pork seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped parsley; then poach in the oven.

← No. 2206 Woodcocks Roasted Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2208 Salmis of Woodcocks a la Sandford →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote this for a Delmonico's brigade with a stockpot of espagnole always at hand. The work divides cleanly: roast and carve the birds, build the sauce from the debris, and bake the trail croustades while the sauce reduces.

The hinge: don't boil the sauceThe half hour "on the side of the range" means a bare simmer at the pan's edge, around 180-190F, so fat and scum rise to one spot to be skimmed. A rolling boil emulsifies that fat back into the sauce and the finished salmis turns greasy and cloudy.
EspagnoleNo. 414 is the classic brown sauce: brown roux moistened with veal stock and mirepoix, simmered for hours. A pint of well-reduced brown veal stock, lightly thickened, stands in for it; a jarred demi-glace concentrate diluted to a pint works but arrives salty, so hold back seasoning until the final reduction.
MeasuresA pint and a half of wine is 3 cups, a pint of espagnole 2 cups. Reduce the wine to about 1 1/2 cups before the espagnole goes in, then reduce the combined sauce until it coats a spoon lightly.
Vessels and toolsA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan, used here just to hold the carved birds warm in the sauce. A tammy is a worsted straining cloth wrung between two people; a fine chinois pressed with a ladle, or a sieve lined with damp muslin, does the same job.
The trailThe "intestines" are the woodcock's trail, traditionally kept because the bird has no crop and the gut is largely clean. Mash it with an equal weight of chicken liver and half that weight of grated unsalted pork fatback, and fill the croustades. The recipe says only to "poach in the oven" and gives no temperature; a moderate oven for a few minutes, until the filling is just set, answers the instruction.
Hollow crustsCroustades: rounds of stale crumb bread or brioche hollowed out and fried or oven-crisped in butter until they hold their shape. Small pre-baked tartlet shells are the modern shortcut.
Sourcing the birdsWoodcock cannot legally be sold in the United States, so this is a hunter's dish; at a US daily bag limit of three, five birds is more than one day's shooting. Quail, snipe or squab take the same treatment, with the trail garnish omitted for anything but woodcock and snipe.
Doneness and yieldThe recipe does not say how far to roast the birds; in a salmis the first roasting is usually kept short, the meat left pink, which is how game birds of this size were traditionally served. Anyone who wants poultry cooked through should carry the carved pieces to 165F in the sauce. Five birds cut into five pieces each serves five as a course, or ten in a longer menu.

A Little History

A salmis is a two-stage French preparation for game: the bird is roasted only partway, carved, and finished in a sauce built from its own pounded carcass and trimmings, which is why the technique belongs to kitchens with birds to spare and a brown sauce already on the stove. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, printed this in The Epicurean (1894) among a run of woodcock salmis distinguished only by their garnishes and the wine used, each carrying a proper name in the manner of the period; "à la Beaumont" here marks the truffle-or-mushroom garnish and the trail croustades rather than any documented person. Woodcock was among the most prized American game birds in the nineteenth century, valued partly because the trail was considered a delicacy and left in the roasting bird. The commercial market that supplied restaurants like Delmonico's was closed by the migratory bird protections of the early twentieth century, which is why a dish once ordered from a menu is now cooked only by those who shoot.