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Quails, Boned and Stuffed
Bone the birds without opening-that is, work the knife from the neck, do not split them down the back; fill them with liver forcemeat (see FORCEMEAT OF LIVER) from a forcing-bag. Truss them, wrap them in buttered paper, and bake on a buttered tin in a brisk oven. Dish them whole on a bed or border of rice. Mask them with good brown sauce flavoured with sherry, and strew some water-cress about the dish. They may also be served cold, with an aspic border, garnished with chopped gherkins, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.
A Victorian game-course dish that survives intact if you get the boning right and keep the oven hot and the cooking short. Everything else — the rice border, the sherry-brown sauce, the cold aspic version — is presentation you can take or leave.
- The hinge: bone through the neckWorking from the neck end keeps the skin unbroken so the bird holds its shape and the forcemeat cannot escape. Use a small, very sharp boning knife, turn the carcass inside out over the ribcage, and leave the wing and leg bones in place if you find the full tunnel-boning too fiddly. A butcher will do it on request; some suppliers sell quail already tunnel-boned.
- Buy farmed quailThe common quail is a protected species in Britain and cannot be taken from the wild, though it is still a legal quarry bird in a number of European countries. Farmed Japanese quail, roughly 4 to 6 oz each, are sold fresh or frozen and are what this recipe now means.
- A brisk ovenRead this as a hot oven, roughly 400-450F (200-230C). Quail are small and lean, and low heat simply dries them out.
- TimingThe book gives none. A stuffed, boned quail of about 5 oz needs roughly 18–22 minutes at that heat. Because the stuffing contains raw liver, check that the centre of the forcemeat reaches 165°F (74°C) rather than judging by the bird alone.
- Buttered paperThe Victorian equivalent of a foil tent: parchment brushed with butter, wrapped round each bird to stop the breast scorching before the stuffing is set. Remove it for the last five minutes if you want colour.
- Liver forcemeatThe cross-referenced forcemeat is not reproduced on this page; Victorian liver forcemeats are generally chicken or game livers pounded with fat bacon, breadcrumbs, shallot and egg. A modern equivalent is a coarse chicken-liver farce bound with egg and a little cream; pipe it in cold and firm, or it will slump before the bird is trussed.
- Brown sauce with sherry'Good brown sauce' here will mean something close to espagnole, a roux-based brown stock sauce. A reduced game or veal stock finished with a splash of dry sherry and mounted with butter gives the same effect in a fraction of the time. 'Mask' simply means coat.
- The cold versionAspic here is clarified stock set with its own gelatine, poured in a shallow ring mould and turned out. If you use commercial gelatine, chill the finished dish thoroughly and keep it refrigerated until served; a stuffed bird sitting in jelly at room temperature is a poor idea now and was then.
- YieldTwo boned quail per person as a main course, one as a starter or game course.
Quail appear all through late-Victorian cookery books as the small, expensive bird of the game course, served between the roast and the sweet at a formal dinner. By the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled, a great many quail eaten in British houses were imported — netted birds arriving in quantity from Egypt and southern Europe and fattened in London before sale — the native breeding population having by then, it is generally said, much declined. Boning a bird from the neck and refilling it with forcemeat was a standard test of a professional kitchen's skill, and the elaborate finishing here (rice border, masked sauce, aspic and chopped gherkin for the cold service) belongs to the world of service à la russe, where dishes were carved out of sight and brought to table already composed for effect.