No. 2253

Croustades of Thrushes

Croustades de Grives

Bone five or six thrushes, leaving on the thighs and two-thirds of the stumps: season them on the opened side and fill with baking forcemeat (No. 81), mingled with a spoonful of plain, raw pork forcemeat (No. 73); bestrew this dressing with a pinch of chopped truffles, and lay in the center a small slice of cooked foies-gras of half a good pullet's liver, seasoned and partly cooked with melted fat pork. Reconstruct the birds to their original shape, but do not sew them, only uphold the legs with a slender wooden skewer; cover over with a small band of buttered paper, and range them in a narrow sautoir lined with fat pork, moistening to half their height with good unskimmed fat. Boil for two minutes, salt over, and remove the sautoir on one side, keeping them for ten to twelve minutes without boiling. These thrushes should merely poach; leave them till partly cold in their liquid, then drain off to pare. Cut six hollow crusts (Fig. 42), slit them around, and fry lightly in butter, then empty out the centers and c ver the hollow with a layer of forcemeat. In the middle of each of these crusts lay one thrush, cover over with a very thin slice of fat pork, and place these on a small, lightly buttered baking sheet and put this one inside another, so as not to have the crusts brown too rapidly. Cook the thrushes in a slack oven for ten to twelve minutes, and as soon as they are nicely done remove and cover them at once with a thin coating of brown sauce (No. 414) reduced with game fumet (No. 397) and Madeira. Glaze the surface of the sauce to let it acquire a brilliancy and luster, then dress and serve.

← No. 2252 Croustades of Reedbirds Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2254 Cupola of Codfish a la Biscayan →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a Delmonico's game entrée built around a bird that no longer has any legal existence as food in the United States or most of Europe. The problems here are legal and ethical rather than technical.

Thrushes are protected birdsAmerican robins, wood thrushes and the other North American members of the family are protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; they cannot lawfully be taken, sold, possessed or served, and no supplier can furnish them. The same applies to the reedbirds (bobolinks) of the preceding recipe in this section. In the EU the Birds Directive bars commercial sale of thrushes, though song thrush and redwing remain legally huntable in a number of member states.
The banned-species problem has no substitutionQuail and squab are farmed and legal, but they are not thrushes: different size, different bone structure, and nothing like the same flavour, which is why nineteenth-century cooks prized the bird in the first place. A current game-bird recipe written for farmed quail is the right place to start rather than a rewrite of this one.
Foie gras restrictionsThe filling depends on cooked foies-gras. Production is banned in most EU member states, though sale generally is not, and sale is restricted in a few U.S. jurisdictions, California most prominently. Check local rules before assuming it is obtainable.
Poaching below the boilRanhofer's method wo minten to twelve minutes drawn to the side of the stove without boiling -- appears deliberate, presumably to keep small birds from tightening and shredding. It also means the birds are held for a long stretch at a temperature the recipe never states, and no doneness check is given for the poaching stage. This is a further reason the method should not be transplanted as written onto other poultry.
Vessels and termsA sautoir is a straight-sided saut aised fat, i.e. fat that has not been skimmed or clarified. "Fat pork" is fresh unsmoked back fat or fatback, used here as barding rather than as a flavouring.
The nested baking sheetsSetting one buttered sheet inside another is a period draught shield — an insulating air gap that keeps the pastry cases from colouring before the filling heats through. A doubled sheet or a sheet on a rack does the same thing in any modern oven.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in his three decades at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters are the clearest surviving evidence of how freely American restaurants once used small wild birds. Thrushes, ortolans, larks, reedbirds and snipe were market goods, sold by the dozen and priced as luxuries; Ranhofer treats them exactly as he treats truffles and foie gras, as expensive things to be stuffed, poached and glazed. The croustade — a hollowed, fried bread or pastry case used as an edible plinth — was the standard way of presenting a single small bird so it arrived intact and upright. Market hunting on this scale collapsed within a generation: the Lacey Act of 1900 curbed interstate traffic in illegally taken game, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 ended the commercial songbird trade in the United States outright. Recipes like this one are the reason such laws were written, and reading them now is closer to archaeology than to cooking.