No. 2252

Croustades of Reedbirds

Croustades de Mauviettes

Cut ten to twelve crusts of bread; slit them all around and simply brown the surfaces in a sautoir with clarified butter to open and empty them out. Bone ten to twelve fine reedbirds, season and fill them with a little baking forcemeat (No. 81), besprinkled with chopped truffles: lay a piece of foies-gras in the center, and return them to their original shape; run a thin skewer through the legs. After the crusts have been emptied and are nearly cold, cover them over quickly with a thin layer of the same forcemeat, and in the hollow space in each lay one of the birds, sinking it down in such a way that it will not be deformed while cooking. Butter them over with a brush, season and cover with a thin slice of fat pork. Place the crusts on a buttered baking sheet, and this on a thick baking-pan so that the heat reaches the top more than the bottom. Cook the birds for twelve to fifteen minutes in a slack oven, and after removing them cover over with a good, reduced, thick and cold brown sauce (No. 414); let them attain a gloss at the oven door, then dress the crusts on a folded napkin.

← No. 2251 Croustades of Lamb Sweetbreads—Small Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2253 Croustades of Thrushes →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

The technique here is sound nineteenth-century garnish cookery, but the central ingredient is no longer legally available in the United States or most of Europe. What follows explains the terms and why the dish cannot be reproduced.

Reedbirds are protectedThe American "reedbird" is the bobolink, Dolichonyx oryzivorus, a migratory songbird taken by market gunners in the rice and wild-oat marshes of the Atlantic seaboard. It has been protected in the United States since the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918; killing, possessing, or selling one is a federal offence. There is no lawful source.
The French title is no betterMauviette is the skylark, sold in quantity in Paris markets in Ranhofer's day. Skylarks fall under the EU Birds Directive; limited hunting persists in some member states, but commercial sale is prohibited. The companion recipe for thrushes at No. 2253 raises the same problem.
No substitution is offeredQuail and squab are farmed and legal, but the dish depends on a bird of a few ounces sitting whole in a bread case, and retiming it here would only imply the original is still makeable. Anyone wanting croustades of small game should work from a current recipe written for farmed birds.
Foie gras and truffleBoth are still obtainable, though foie gras is banned from sale in some jurisdictions, notably California and, at various times, New York City. Check locally before assuming the filling is available either.
"Slack oven"A slow oven. Ranhofer gives no figure; period usage generally puts a slack oven somewhere in the region of 250-300F. The birds cook in twelve to fifteen minutes because they weigh only a few ounces apiece.
The croustade itselfThe bread cases are the one part of this worth keeping: crusts slit all around, the surfaces browned in clarified butter in a sautoir, then opened and emptied, and lined with forcemeat once nearly cold. That method transfers perfectly well to any modern filling.
Fat pork and the double panThe slice of fat pork is a barde, laid on to baste a lean bird; the baking sheet set on a second thick pan is a heat shield, throwing the oven's force onto the top so the bread base does not scorch. Both are ordinary period practice, not peculiar to this dish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and reedbirds appear in it because they were a genuine luxury of the American table. Bobolinks fattened on wild rice in the Delaware and Chesapeake marshes each autumn, where they were shot in enormous numbers and shipped to city markets by the barrel; contemporary accounts describe them sold by the dozen, plump enough to be roasted whole and eaten bones and all. Ranhofer, trained in France, simply mapped them onto the existing Parisian repertoire for mauviettes, skylarks, which were prepared in exactly this way with forcemeat, truffle and foie gras. The commercial hunt is the reason the dish is now unmakeable: the same market gunning that supplied Delmonico's helped drive the campaigns that produced the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which ended the trade in wild songbirds outright. The recipe survives as a record of a kitchen, and of an appetite, that the law caught up with.