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Broiled Snipe with Bacon
Pick, singe and cut legs off six fat snipe, pick out eyes, split open down back without separating, draw and neatly wipe. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, repeatedly turn snipes in seasoning, arrange on a double broiler, and broil over a brisk fire for three minutes on each side. Prepare six pieces toast cut in two-inch squares, arrange them on hot dish, place snipe over toasts, then arrange six thin slices freshly broiled bacon on top and serve.
A simple high-heat game preparation whose success rests almost entirely on the fire being hot enough and the birds coming off it fast. Everything else is assembly.
- Sourcing the birdsWilson's snipe is still a legal migratory game bird in much of North America but is never sold commercially, so this is a hunter's recipe. Six quail, split the same way, behave much the same over the same fire; squab are considerably larger and need longer.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler. This is a hinged wire broiler — two grids that clamp the split birds flat so they can be turned as a single unit. A hinged fish grill or a flat grill basket does the same job.
- "A brisk fire"Live coals at their hottest, or a gas grill run wide open with the lid up; the book gives no temperature. Under a household broiler, preheat 10 minutes and set the birds 3 inches from the element.
- Three minutes a sideCorrect for a bird this small, and the point of the whole dish: snipe breast is dark and lean and turns to liver-flavored cardboard if cooked through. Expect rosy meat at the breastbone. If you want the 165F internal temperature now recommended for wild birds, cook longer and accept a different, drier dish.
- "Draw" and the trailThe book tells you to gut the birds, which was already the polite Anglo-American compromise — traditional practice left snipe and woodcock undrawn so the "trail" cooked into the toast. Removing the eyes and lower legs is cosmetic; the head was normally left on and the long bill often used as a skewer to pin the bird closed.
- ShotRun a finger over the breast and flanks before seasoning. Lead pellets are a real hazard in wild-shot birds and the small ones hide in the muscle.
- The toastTwo-inch squares of firm white bread, dried and browned rather than sliced-bread-soft, so they hold the juices without collapsing. The recipe does not mention buttering them.
- YieldSix snipe is a first course for six or a main course for three. Cut the bacon slices thin so they crisp quickly; the recipe gives no timing for them.
Snipe belongs to the small group of birds — with woodcock, ortolan and lark — that nineteenth-century cookery treated as delicacies to be eaten almost whole and barely cooked, on toast that caught the drippings. Its presence in a general-purpose cookbook reflects a market that no longer exists: shorebirds and songbirds were sold openly in American and European game markets until migratory-bird protection laws, culminating in the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States, ended commercial traffic in wild game. The bird's name is generally taken to be the source of "sniper" — a marksman good enough to hit something as small and erratic in flight as a snipe. Wilson's snipe remains huntable under season and bag limits in many states; most of its old market companions do not.