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Small Birds, Broiled
Pick the birds carefully so as not to tear the skin. Split them open down the back, flatten them, lay them on a clean gridiron which has been heated and rubbed with mutton suet, the inside to the fire. Place the gridiron rather high above the fire. When nearly done through turn the birds, and let them remain until the outside is brightly browned. Put them on a hot dish, butter them, sprinkle pepper and salt upon them, and serve quickly. A French cook would sprinkle pepper and salt upon them, and brush them over with butter, before laying them on the gridiron.
A gridiron method for spatchcocked small game birds, written when a cook could buy larks and thrushes by the dozen. The technique transfers directly to quail; the birds themselves mostly do not.
- Which birds you may legally cookThe "small birds" of this period were larks, thrushes, blackbirds, plovers and sparrows, nearly all of which are now protected — in Britain under wildlife legislation descending from the Wild Birds Protection Acts, and in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Farmed quail, squab and poussin are the legal equivalents and behave the same way on a grill.
- Splitting down the backThis is spatchcocking. Cut either side of the backbone with shears, open the bird out and press firmly on the breastbone until it cracks flat, so the whole bird sits in contact with the bars and cooks in one plane.
- The gridironA gridiron is a bar grate set over coals, not a solid plate. Use a charcoal grill with the grate a good distance from the fire, or a gas grill on medium; an overhead broiler works if you keep the pan on a low shelf rather than directly under the element.
- Mutton suet on the barsRubbing hot bars with suet is a non-stick measure — the fat sets on the metal and keeps skin from welding to it. Any hard fat or a well-oiled cloth does the job now.
- "Rather high above the fire"The hinge of the recipe. Small birds are almost all skin and thin breast; close to the coals the skin scorches long before the flesh sets. Distance and patience are what produce a bird browned through rather than blackened outside and raw at the joint.
- Cut side firstStarting with the opened inside to the fire lets the exposed flesh firm up and the juices settle before the skin is exposed. The skin side goes last, briefly, for colour.
- TimingThe original gives none. Quail split flat take roughly 4–6 minutes on the cut side and 3–4 on the skin side over a moderate fire; squab is a little longer. Poultry, including game birds, should reach 165F at the thickest part of the thigh.
- The French finishSeasoning and buttering before grilling, as the note suggests, gives better browning and seasons the flesh rather than the plate. Butter over an open fire will flare, which is another reason for the high grate.
- YieldTwo quail or one squab per person as a main course, one quail as a savoury or first course. Serve on very hot plates with toast beneath to catch the butter.
This was compiled when small birds were a genuine article of British commerce: larks came into the London markets in their thousands from Dunstable and the Sussex downs, and thrushes and blackbirds were routine autumn eating across Europe. The recipe's brevity is telling — it assumes the reader knows what a dozen larks look like and needs to be told only about the height of the gridiron. Its aside about the French cook reflects a running theme in Victorian cookery writing, where English plainness is measured against French method; here the French practice is to season and butter before the fire rather than after, though the text states this without saying which it prefers. Legal protection for wild birds in Britain began in earnest with the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1880 and widened steadily thereafter, which is why later editions of books like this one begin to feel like documents of a vanished larder rather than working instructions.