Cases of Snipe with Jelly-Small

This entree should be served on a dish having its bottom covered with cooked paste (No. 131) and the outer edge decorated with an open-work border of the same; and in the center a cone-shaped support, first covered with paper then with chopped jelly. This support must have a hole through the top in order to sustain a hatelet. Bone six large snipe, stuff them with chopped forcemeat (No. 77); to this add the chopped entrails of the bird sauted in butter and sew them up to keep the stuffing in. Maintain them in shape with a band of buttered paper. Range them in a narrow sautoir lined with fat pork and aromatic herbs, moisten with half a glassful of white wine and reduce on a brisk fire; then moisten to about their height with stock (No. 194a); season and mask over with fat pork. Boil the liquid for five minutes and then remove the saucepan to a slower fire, or to a slack oven to cook for half an hour, then let cool off in their own stock. Unwrap the snipe, pare and split them lengthwise in two, shape them properly to fit the half-heart paper cases and range the halved birds on a small baking sheet and set them aside to cool for a quarter of an hour. Now take up each half snipe, one by one, and dip them in a brown chaudfroid sauce (No. 594) thickened when required to have it quite firm; return them to the sheet and remove them separately when hard, to suppress any surplus sauce; brush them over lightly with jelly and lay each half in a half-heart-shaped case having its bottom covered with chopped jelly. Range the cases around the support, the point upward, leaning them against the border; insert a garnished hatelet into the top of the support. Surround the bottom of the dish with a chain of triangle jelly croutons.