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Snipe and Other Small Birds Broiled

Broiled small birds, such as snipe, are seasoned with butter, pepper, and salt and cooked over a hot broiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Snipe and Other Small Birds Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the birds and wipe them dry.

  2. Split the birds down the backbone.

  3. Rub the birds with melted butter and sprinkle with pepper, but do not add salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the birds on a hot broiler over a clear bed of coals.

  2. Turn them often and cook until both sides are browned.

  3. Transfer to a hot platter, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and pour ½ teaspoon of melted butter over each half.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small birds (snipe)
The main protein; splitting them flat lets heat reach the meat evenly.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture and helps the surface brown under direct heat.

The step that matters

Turning often while broiling. Direct heat from coals browns the surface quickly through the Maillard reaction, so frequent turning spreads the heat and prevents the outside from burning before the inside is cooked.

“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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