No. 2319

Woodcock Pie—Hot

Pate Chaud de Becasses

Bone six very clean, singed woodcock, keeping the heads which should be cleaned, the eyes imitated with quenelle forcemeat, and a round piece of truffle for the pupil; cook the intestines in butter, and when cold pass through a sieve and mix them with some game quenelle forcemeat (No. 91), seasoned highly with salt, pepper, duxelle, and chopped parsley; stuff the birds with this, enclose well the dressing, and lay them in bottomless oval molds the same size as themselves; cover with bards of fat pork, and cook in a moderate oven. Make a fumet (No. 397) with the bones, adding to it some espagnole sauce (No. 414) in the act of being reduced; take away a third, and to the remaining two-thirds add some truffles and mushrooms; let both garnishing and birds be cold. Line a hot pie mold (Fig. 152) with foundation paste (No. 135), leaving it reach above the top; fill the center with the birds and garnishing alternated, then wet the top part of the paste, and cover over with a flat of the same; make an edge reaching half an inch above the level of the mold, pinch it on the side and top, and decorate the summit either with noodle paste (No. 142), forming an aperture in the center, or puff paste parings; egg over twice; bake in a hot oven for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half; add a gill of Madeira wine to the remaining two-thirds of sauce and pour it into the hot pie, then serve.

← No. 2318 Patties with Gravy—Small Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2320 Potted Tenderloin of Beef a la Nelson →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a shelf of mother sauces and a game larder. Stripped of its cross-references, this is a raised pie: boned birds stuffed with their own forcemeat, part-roasted, cooled, then sealed in pastry with a reduced game sauce.

Everything must go into the pastry coldRanhofer is explicit: "let both garnishing and birds be cold." Warm birds and warm sauce will melt the fat in the crust before it sets, and the pie bakes another hour and a quarter to an hour and a half after assembly. Chill the cooked birds and the garnished sauce thoroughly, ideally overnight.
Sourcing the birdsWoodcock cannot legally be bought in the United States; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act ended market hunting, so the only lawful source is a licensed hunter's own birds in season. Six quail, or four snipe-sized game birds, stand in reasonably well, though quail have no comparable trail.
The intestinesThe "trail" — the intestines, minus the gizzard — is the point of woodcock cookery, not a curiosity. Sauté briefly in butter, cool, sieve, and fold into the forcemeat. If you are substituting quail, use a few chicken livers cooked the same way.
Oven temperaturesRanhofer's "moderate" oven for the initial cooking of the birds is usually read as somewhere around 350F; the birds want only to be set through, since they cook again in the pie. His "hot" oven is hotter still, but at that heat for 75-90 minutes the crust will scorch — start hot for 20 minutes, drop to around 350F, and tent the decorated top with foil once it has colored.
Paste and molds"Foundation paste" (No. 135) is a stiff lining paste meant to stand up as a wall, not a flaky short crust; the "hot pie mold" is a mold for hot raised pies, made to be opened away from the baked pie. "Bottomless oval molds" are simply rings that hold each bird in shape while it cooks — deep cutters or foil collars do the job.
Sauce shortcutsA fumet (No. 397) is a concentrated game stock made from the bones; espagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce. A well-reduced dark game or veal stock, lightly thickened, gets you to the same place. Duxelle is finely chopped mushroom and shallot cooked dry in butter.
A gill of MadeiraHalf a cup. It goes into the reserved third-turned-two-thirds of sauce, which is poured through the vent in the pastry lid after baking — hence the aperture in the noodle-paste decoration. Warm the sauce first so it flows.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of pork back fat, tied over the birds to keep them from drying. Caul fat or the thinnest unsmoked streaky bacon substitutes; remove smoked bacon from consideration, as it will dominate the game.
YieldSix birds, six servings, cut in wedges at the table. The heads, cleaned and given quenelle-and-truffle eyes, are plainly meant to be seen, though Ranhofer does not say how they are arranged. It is a centerpiece dish.

A Little History

This is Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe shows what a high-end American kitchen of the 1890s took for granted: a numbered system of stocks and sauces, boning done by hand, and woodcock treated as the aristocrat of game birds. The pâté chaud — a hot raised pie served from its mold with sauce poured in at the last moment — was a French formal-service form, distinct from the cold pâté en croûte of the buffet. Woodcock has long been cooked with its intestines rather than drawn, on the traditional reasoning that the bird's diet of earthworms leaves the trail clean and highly flavored; the mock eyes of forcemeat and truffle belong to the same nineteenth-century taste for showing the diner exactly which bird was sacrificed. Market hunting collapsed in the following generation, and by 1918 federal law had removed woodcock from commerce in the United States, which is why a dish that once appeared on a Manhattan menu is now, at best, a private hunter's supper.