No. 906

Crusts of Woodcock

Croutes de Becasses

Have a kitchen loaf of bread (Fig. 210) and from it cut seven or eight oblong slices, each one three-eighths of an inch thick; brown lightly in clarified butter on one side only, then remove them leaving the butter in the sautoire. Fry on a brisk fire the intestines of two woodcock with melted fat pork and a few good chicken livers, also two or three slices of calf's liver, aromatic herbs and seasoning. Pound this preparation, rub it through a sieve and put the pulp into a vessel to stir in with it a few spoonfuls of good, reduced and well thickened Madeira sauce (No. 492), adding also four raw egg-yolks and a dash of nutmeg. With this cover the browned sides of the crusts, smoothing the surfaces bomb-shaped. Return the crusts to the sautoire then set the pan on the oven to fry the bread underneath, and poach the preparation. Glaze the surface with a little meat glaze laid on with a brush, remove from the pan, place them on a napkin to drain, then dress them on hot plates, and serve very hot.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's croûtes are a savoury canapé built on a liver forcemeat bound with raw yolk and set by gentle heat, not a baked dish. The whole thing turns on that setting step.

The hinge: poach, don't bakeFour raw yolks in a small quantity of purée will scramble and weep if the pan gets much above a bare simmer of heat. Ranhofer's "set the pan on the oven" most likely means the top of the range rather than inside it: low, steady heat, so the topping firms like a custard while the bread crisps underneath. If it bubbles, it has gone too far.
Woodcock and the trailThe "intestines" are the trail, the undrawn gut of the bird, traditionally kept and eaten; the often-repeated explanation that woodcock void themselves in flight is folklore rather than established fact. Woodcock cannot be sold in the United States and are only had from a hunter, so in practice this recipe now depends on a shooting season. Two birds' worth of trail is a very small quantity; the chicken and calf's livers carry most of the flavour anyway.
Calf's liverOrder it from a butcher; "two or three slices" is imprecise, and a few ounces is the order of magnitude implied. It is milder and firmer than beef liver, which will dominate the mixture.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than a saucepan and heavier than a skillet. Any wide sauté pan that will hold seven or eight slices in one layer and go from burner to oven does the job.
Kitchen loafA close-crumbed white loaf (Ranhofer refers to his Fig. 210); a square sandwich loaf of the pain de mie type is the nearest modern equivalent. Modern airy bread collapses under the wet forcemeat. Three-eighths of an inch is a shade under 1 cm; cut the slices yourself.
Madeira sauce No. 492A demi-glace finished with Madeira, reduced until it coats a spoon heavily. A few spoonfuls of a good commercial demi-glace reduced with a splash of dry Madeira stands in; the point is thickness, since a thin sauce will loosen the forcemeat and it will slide off the bread.
Meat glazeGlace de viande, brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold. Warmed slightly and brushed on, it gives the lacquered finish. Sold in small tubs or jars.
Yield and serviceSeven or eight pieces, meant as a hot side dish in a long menu, or two to three portions as a first course. They must go out immediately; the crust softens within minutes and the point of the dish is the contrast.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer cooked at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertoire written down, French in structure and vocabulary even when the ingredients are American. Woodcock was among the most prized game birds of the nineteenth-century table on both sides of the Atlantic, and the convention of cooking it undrawn, then spreading the trail on toast set beneath the roasting bird, is old enough that this croûte reads as a refinement of it rather than an invention: the trail is stretched with poultry and calf's liver, bound with yolk, and served as one of the many small hot dishes that filled out a Gilded Age menu between the fish and the roast. Such croûtes and croustades occupy dozens of consecutive numbers in the book, a reminder that a Delmonico's dinner was measured in courses rather than portions, and that a kitchen brigade existed to sieve two birds' worth of offal into a spoonful of purée.