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Broiled Snipes

Broiled snipes served on hot toast with maitre d'hotel butter and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broiled Snipes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Singe, draw, and dry the snipe, removing the skin from the heads.

  2. Split the snipe in half without detaching the parts and place them on a dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and oil.

  2. Broil the snipe with the bills stuck into the breasts for 4 minutes on each side.

  3. Place the hot toast on a serving dish and arrange the snipe on top.

  4. Spread the maitre d'hotel butter over the snipe, decorate with watercress, and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Snipe
Is the main protein, cooked whole-split so the meat heats quickly and evenly under the broiler.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Melts over the hot birds, adding richness and moisture and a herby, savoury flavour.
Hot toast
Soaks up drippings and butter, giving the birds a base that is moist and savoury.

The step that matters

Broiling the snipe. Small birds dry out quickly under direct high heat. Watching them closely and turning them at the stated time keeps the meat juicy while the skin and surface brown.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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