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Roast Rail Birds
Cut off at the first joint the legs of six nice, fat, picked, rail birds. Tear the skin from the neck and head of each bird and pick out the eyes with the point of a small knife. Remove the intestines, keeping the livers and hearts on a plate; press the legs of each bird under the breasts, and place on a small roasting tin. Season inside and all around with one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; pour a tablespoon water over the tin. Set in a brisk oven to roast for ten minutes. Remove and keep warm. Finely chop the livers and hearts with half a very small white onion and two branches well-washed parsley. Have six small freshly prepared toasts two inches square and quarter-inch thick. Evenly spread the mixture over the toasts. Dredge with a tablespoon bread crumbs, divide a teaspoon butter in very small pieces over and place in the oven for five minutes. Remove, arrange on a hot dish, place the birds on top, decorate the dish with a little watercress and serve.
A game-bird course from the era when rail were shot in the tidal marshes each September and sold by the dozen. The method transfers cleanly to quail; the sourcing does not.
- Sourcing the birdsRail are migratory game birds and cannot be bought. Farmed quail, weighing about 4-5 oz dressed, are the closest thing on the market and roast in much the same time. Squab is too large and too fatty a substitute.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400-450F. The whole point of the ten minutes is a hot, short roast that browns the skin before the very lean breast dries out.
- Ten minutes is not a mistakeA bird this small at 450F comes out with the breast still pink, which is how rail and quail were and are eaten. If that is not what you want, take the birds to 165F in the thigh and accept a drier breast.
- The head and eyesFilippini keeps the head on and skins it, a standard presentation for small game birds. Nothing is lost by removing the head entirely; skinning the neck alone gives a tidier bird for the platter.
- The liver spreadThis is raw chopped offal on toast going into the oven for five minutes. Spread it thin, no more than a scant 1/8 inch, so it cooks through -- poultry liver should show no pink and reach 165F. Any thicker and the centre stays raw under a browned crumb crust.
- The toastsThese are croutes: bread cut 2 inches square and 1/4 inch thick, dried and lightly coloured before the liver goes on, so they hold up under the juices from the birds.
- The tablespoon of waterNot a sauce, just enough to keep the pan drippings from scorching in a hot oven for ten minutes. Scrape them over the birds before serving.
- YieldSix birds and six toasts serve three as a main course, six as a first course. The seasoning given -- 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white pepper -- is for all six birds together.
Rail, and above all the sora rail, were a fixture of the American autumn table along the Atlantic tidewater. Through September the birds fattened in the wild rice and marsh grass of the Delaware, the Chesapeake and the Connecticut, and were hunted at high tide from flat skiffs pushed through the reeds with a long pole, one man poling while the other shot the birds as they flushed. They came to market in New York and Philadelphia by the dozen, cheap and enormously fashionable, and hotel and restaurant menus of the 1880s and 1890s list them as a matter of course. That is why this recipe reads the way it does: it assumes a cook confronted with a basket of tiny birds, all needing the same brisk handling, and it uses the giblets on toast in the classic French manner for small game rather than throwing them away. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, implementing the 1916 convention, and the end of commercial market hunting closed that trade, and the dish went with it; rail remain a legal game bird in season in many states, but no longer an article of commerce.