Skip to main content
Main

To Roast Snipes, Woodcocks, or Plovers

Roasted snipes, woodcocks, or plovers served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Roast Snipes, Woodcocks, or Plovers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick the birds immediately and wipe them clean.

  2. Season the birds lightly with pepper and salt.

  3. Toast slices of bread until brown and butter them.

  4. Lay the buttered toast in a pan.

Roast and serve

  1. Dredge the birds with flour and place them in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste the birds with lard or fresh butter while cooking.

  3. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes until done.

  4. Serve the birds on the toast.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Snipes, woodcocks, or plovers
Main protein; the birds are the dish and are cooked whole in the oven.
Flour
Dusted on the birds to help form a light browned surface as they roast.
Butter
Enriches the toast and adds flavour and browning to the dish.
Lard or fresh butter
Basting fat that keeps the birds moist and promotes browning while roasting.
Slices of bread
Toasted base that soaks up pan juices and supports the birds.

The step that matters

Baste the birds while cooking. Small birds dry out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting with fat keeps the meat moist and helps the surface brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes