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BROILED CHICKEN, QUAIL, SQUIRREL OR WOODCOCK
Any of these must be tender. Take the breast of the first two, or the thighs of the others; place on hot coals or on a broiler, turning often to prevent burning. When done, remove the burned parts, if any, season slightly with butter, pepper and salt, and serve at once.
Four birds and one rodent in a single line, all treated the same way: fast dry heat, minimal seasoning, served the moment it comes off the fire. A few of the assumptions behind it need spelling out.
- "Broiler" means a gridironIn 1877 a broiler was a hinged wire or iron grid held over coals, not a heating element in an oven. The nearest equivalent is a grill or a ridged cast-iron pan; an overhead oven broiler works but gives you one-sided heat, so turn the meat as often as the original says.
- Cook to temperature, not to colorWild game birds and squirrel should reach 165F internally, checked at the thickest part. Woodcock and quail are traditionally served pink at the breast, but that is a choice made with known, well-handled birds, not a safety margin.
- Why breast for some and thigh for othersChicken and quail breast is the tenderest cut and cooks in minutes, and a squirrel's meat is concentrated in the hindquarters, its forequarters being thin and quick to dry over coals. Why the book sends you to the thigh of a woodcock rather than the breast it gives no hint of, and it runs against the usual practice of prizing the woodcock breast.
- "Must be tender" is the hingeBroiling only suits young animals. An older squirrel or a stewing hen will be leathery no matter how carefully it is turned; those want long moist cooking. If in doubt about age, do not broil.
- TimingQuail breast and a small chicken breast run roughly 4 to 6 minutes a side over hot coals; squirrel thighs take longer, 10 to 15 minutes, and want the cooler part of the fire once colored.
- "Remove the burned parts"An open-coal instruction with no modern equivalent needed. Over a controlled grill or pan, keep the heat moderate rather than fierce and there will be nothing to cut away.
- Seasoning and yieldButter, salt and pepper only, applied after cooking rather than before, which is consistent with sickroom cookery if the recipe does indeed sit among the invalid dishes. One quail or one squirrel's thighs is a single small portion; a chicken breast serves one.
- SourcingQuail is farmed and widely available. Woodcock and squirrel are hunted, not sold commercially in the United States, so they come from a hunter or not at all.
This appears among the dishes for the sick, and that placement colours everything about it. Nineteenth-century sickroom cookery held that the convalescent needed concentrated nourishment in tiny quantities, delivered with as little seasoning, fat or sauce as possible, so the standard prescriptions were beef tea, milk toast, and small portions of broiled meat. Game was thought especially digestible and "strengthening," and in a Midwestern household of the 1870s quail, woodcock and squirrel would have been seasonal game rather than luxuries. The interchangeability of the four in one recipe is itself the historical detail: one method served whatever game came to hand, and the book simply notes which part of each animal is worth the coals.