Stuff the quail. Put 1 tablespoonful of butter in a large stew-pan; add some thin slices of bacon. Let get very hot. Lay in the birds; sprinkle with salt and pepper; add 1 small onion and 1 carrot chopped fine. Cover and let brown a few minutes, then add 1 cup of hot water. Let stew slowly until tender. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with milk; add some chopped parsley; let boil up and serve hot.
A straightforward braise, written for cooks who already knew what went inside a quail. The gaps are the stuffing and the timings, both of which need filling in.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe never says how many birds. A large stew-pan will take four to six quail, which at the usual two birds a head serves two to three. The original calls for 1 cup of hot water; adjust it to the number of birds so the liquid comes part way up them.
- The stuffing"Stuff the quail" leaves the filling to the reader. A plain bread stuffing suits it: soft breadcrumbs bound with butter and egg, seasoned with parsley, and the chopped livers if you have them. Keep it loose and use only a spoonful per bird, since a tightly packed cavity slows the cooking and splits the skin.
- Farmed birds, not wildThe quail behind a recipe like this would have been shot birds, leaner and more variable in age than what you can buy now, which is likely why the instruction is to "stew slowly until tender." Farmed quail are fatter and younger and need roughly 20 to 25 minutes of gentle simmering. Overcooked quail goes dry and stringy on the breast.
- The browning step"Cover and let brown a few minutes" is contradictory as written — a lid traps steam and prevents colour. Brown the birds uncovered in the butter and bacon fat, turning them, then add the onion and carrot and cover for a few minutes to sweat before the water goes in.
- BaconThe thin slices are there for fat, not flavour bulk. Cured bacon of this sort was often saltier than a modern rasher; use two or three slices, or a piece of pancetta or unsmoked streaky, and hold back on the salt until you have tasted the sauce.
- Thickening with flour and milkFlour slaked in cold milk will lump if it hits hot liquid carelessly. Whisk about a tablespoon of flour into a quarter cup of cold milk, lift the birds out, then stream it into the simmering sauce while stirring. It must boil a full minute or two to lose the raw flour taste — the "let boil up" in the original is doing that work.
- DonenessQuail is done when the thigh juices run clear and the leg moves freely at the joint. If you want a number, 165F at the thickest part of the thigh; the stuffing should reach the same.
- ServingServe the birds on toast or fried bread to catch the sauce, which is thin by design. Watercress or a plain buttered vegetable goes well with them.
Quail appears in many general cookbooks of the period because the birds were cheap, plentiful and sold by the dozen in American markets before state game laws and the interstate provisions of the Lacey Act closed the market trade in wild game. The method here is straightforwardly French e0 cailles en cocotte or en casserole, birds browned in fat with bacon and a little aromatic vegetable, then moistened and covered — and the flour-and-milk thickening at the end is the Anglo-American concession, where a French kitchen would more likely have reduced the liquid or used a butter-and-flour beurre manié. Books of this sort, offering one dish a day from a different country, were selling novelty as much as instruction; the "French" label signalled refinement to the household cook.