No. 2448

Cases of Snipe with Jelly-Small

Petites Caisses de Becassines a la Gelee

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.

← No. 2447 Cases of Lobster a la Ravigote-Small The Cold Service No. 2449 Cases of Thrushes with Jelly-Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a cold buffet showpiece from Delmonico's, built as much for the sideboard as for the plate. Nearly every element is a cross-reference to another entry in Ranhofer's book, so the work is in the components, not the assembly.

What the numbers meanNo. 131 is a cooked paste of the sort used for pedestals and borders, a display dough rather than something meant to be eaten. No. 77 is a forcemeat, No. 194a a stock, No. 594 a brown chaudfroid — a brown sauce bound with aspic that sets firm when chilled.
HateletAn hâtelet is an ornamental silver skewer, threaded with truffle, cockscomb or a glazed crayfish and driven into the top of the paper-and-jelly cone purely for height. Omit it and the dish still works; nothing about it is edible in the usual sense.
Sautoir and fat porkA sautoir is a straight-sided shallow pan. "Fat pork" is fresh pork back fat sliced thin, used to line the pan and to blanket the birds so they braise without drying. Unsmoked fatback or barding fat is the direct equivalent; smoked bacon will overwhelm the game.
Oven heatA "slack" oven is roughly 275-300F. The birds want a bare tremble for the half hour, then to cool completely in their own liquid, which is what firms the flesh enough to split and dip.
Half a glassful of wineThe book does not define its 'glassful' on this page; taken as a cup, half a glassful is about 4 fl oz of dry white — enough to reduce almost to a glaze before the stock goes in.
The entrailsSnipe and woodcock are traditionally drawn of the gizzard only; the rest, the "trail," is prized and here is sautéed and worked into the forcemeat. If the birds arrive already dressed you will have to increase the forcemeat to compensate, and you lose the point of the dish.
Sourcing the birdsSnipe are wild game, taken in season and rarely sold; farmed quail of similar size is the practical substitute, though the flavour is much milder. Six birds boned, cooked and split give twelve cases, so twelve small servings.
The hinge: temperature of the chaudfroidThe sauce must be cool enough to cling in one even coat but still fluid — too warm and it runs off, too cool and it sets in ridges. Dip the halves cold, straight from a quarter hour on the sheet, and work in a cold room. Once coated and set, one thin brush of clear aspic gives the gloss.
Holding itEverything here is aspic-set meat eaten cold. Assemble as late as possible and keep the finished dish refrigerated until it goes out; the cone, border and croutons can all be made a day ahead.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to its cold service — the elaborate chaudfroid and aspic work that filled a nineteenth-century buffet table, where food was arranged on socles and borders and viewed before it was eaten. Snipe was a standard item of the American game market then, sold in city stalls alongside plover and reedbird in numbers that would be unthinkable now, and its small size made it ideal for these individual paper cases. The instruction to sauté the bird's own entrails into the stuffing follows old European practice for snipe and woodcock, whose trail is traditionally regarded as the best part; French cooks generally spread it on toast set beneath the roasting bird, and Ranhofer simply folds that idea into the forcemeat. The neighbouring recipes for thrushes and larks are a reminder of how far the definition of table game has narrowed since.