No. 918

Woodcock Mousseline

Mousseline de Becasses

Prepare a mousseline forcemeat made with the meats from woodcock as indicated in Elementary Methods (No. 87); mix in with it a few spoonfuls of truffles cut in small squares an eighth of an inch in size; with this forcemeat fill some mousseline molds (No. 2, Fig. 138) decorated with truffles and red beef tongue as shown in Fig. 230; smooth the tops and poach as explained (No. 152). At the last moment take out the mousselines, cover the bottom of the dish with a little consommé (No. 189), unmold and dress them in a circle. Serve separately an espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduced with game fumct (No. 397), having prepared it with the woodcock parings.

← No. 917 Mousseline of White Game a la Medicis Hot Side Dishes No. 919 Mousseline of Young Rabbit →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, assuming you have his Elementary Methods at hand. What follows is what those numbers stand for and what a cook needs to know to get the dish onto a plate.

What a mousseline forcemeat isRaw boned meat pounded and sieved fine, then worked over ice with egg white and heavy cream until it is a smooth, pale paste. A workable modern proportion is 1 lb cleaned meat, 2 egg whites, 1 to 1 1/4 cups cream, seasoned with salt and a little white pepper. Everything — meat, bowl, blade, cream — must stay near freezing or the emulsion breaks and weeps fat during poaching.
Sourcing the birdWoodcock is a legal game bird in both the US and UK, but in the US it may not be sold commercially, so there it reaches the kitchen only through a hunter; in Britain wild woodcock is sold by game dealers in season. Quail, squab, or the breast of wild duck give a similar dark, faintly livery character; reckon roughly four to six woodcock for the meat of two squab.
The trailWoodcock is traditionally cooked undrawn, the intestines prized as a spread. For a forcemeat, draw the birds and reserve the liver and heart to pound in with the meat — that is where the flavor that justifies the dish lives. Discard the gizzard and gut.
Poaching, not bakingNo. 152 means a bain-marie: the filled molds set in a pan of hot water that comes halfway up, covered with buttered paper. Hold the water at 170-180F and never let it simmer; boiling water inflates and then collapses the forcemeat into something spongy and grey.
Time and donenessThree-ounce dariole or timbale molds take roughly 18-25 minutes. Cook to an internal 165F, the recommended temperature for ground poultry and game; a mousseline is not a preparation to serve underdone, and it sets properly well below the point of drying out.
Truffle decorationThe pattern of truffle and scarlet tongue is pressed into a buttered, well-chilled mold, where the firm butter holds it in place until the forcemeat goes in; work quickly so the butter does not soften and let the pieces slide. For the eighth-inch dice worked into the paste you need whole truffle rather than peelings.
The sauceEspagnole reduced with game fumet made from the carcasses, heads, and trimmings. A modern kitchen can reach the same place with a strong brown veal stock reduced with roasted game bones, a splash of Madeira, and butter mounted in at the end.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Figure one mold per person as a hot side dish within a longer menu, two as a first course; the quantities above fill eight to ten three-ounce molds.

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 sits in a run of mousselines — white game, woodcock, young rabbit — that shows how completely the technique had taken over fine restaurant cooking by the end of the century. The mousseline forcemeat, meat pounded and sieved and lightened with egg white and cream, was the refinement of the older quenelle made with panada and suet; it traded body for delicacy and became the standard test of a garde-manger's hands. Woodcock (bécasse) carried particular prestige in French kitchens because of its strong, almost offal-like flavor and the ritual of cooking it undrawn, so turning it into something as smooth and pale as a mousseline was a deliberate display of transformation. Wild game of this kind moved freely through American restaurants in the 1880s and 1890s via market hunters; the federal protections that ended the commercial trade in migratory birds came only in the following decades, which is why a dish Ranhofer could order by the dozen is now, in practice, a hunter's dish or none at all.