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Quail
2 plump quail 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup seasoned broth 1/2 cup currant jelly 1 teaspoon onion Salt and pepper Celery salt 1 tablespoon mushroom catsup Split the birds open down the back. Put the butter in the chafing dish and brown slightly; put in the birds and cook about ten minutes, turning once. When nicely browned add the broth, jelly, catsup, onion juice and other seasonings.
A chafing-dish supper dish built on two small birds and a sweet-tart pan sauce. Nearly everything translates directly; the vessel and one condiment are the sticking points.
- The chafing dishThe cooking happens in the blazer pan set directly over the flame, with the water pan removed — otherwise the butter will never brown. A heavy 10-inch skillet does the same job; use the chafing dish for the table if you want the theater.
- "1 teaspoon onion"The instructions later call it onion juice, which is what is meant: grate a piece of onion and press out a teaspoon of liquid. A teaspoon of finely grated onion is a reasonable stand-in, though it will cloud the sauce slightly.
- Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice extract, not tomato ketchup. Bottled mushroom ketchup is still made in Britain; a tablespoon of Worcestershire, or two teaspoons of soy sauce with a little sherry, gives a similar savory depth.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly, the standard English accompaniment to game. Half a cup with only half a cup of broth makes a frankly sweet, syrupy sauce by modern taste — start with a third of a cup and add more once it has melted and you can judge it.
- Timing on the birdsQuail run 4 to 6 ounces dressed. Split and flattened, ten minutes over a chafing-dish flame browns them but rarely cooks them through; let them finish in the sauce, covered, for another five to eight minutes and check that the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165F.
- Splitting down the backCut along either side of the backbone with shears and press the bird flat. Flattening is what makes the short cooking time work at all; an intact bird would need longer.
- Broth"Seasoned broth" here means a well-salted chicken or game stock. Since the jelly and the catsup both carry salt, taste before adding more.
- YieldTwo quail serve two people as a light course, one as a main. Buttered toast under the birds catches the sauce.
Chafing-dish cookery was a genuine fashion in American households around the turn of the twentieth century: a spirit lamp, a blazer pan and a water pan let a hostess cook at the table without servants, and cookbooks of the era devoted whole chapters to it. The repertoire ran to things that cook fast — lobster, kidneys, eggs, oysters, and small birds like quail. Quail were far commoner on American tables then than now, sold by market gunners as well as shot for sport, and the pairing with red currant jelly comes straight out of English game cookery, where the sweet jelly was thought to answer the leanness of wild birds. Mushroom catsup belongs to the same inheritance: before tomato ketchup took the name, "catsup" covered a family of thin savory extracts made from mushrooms, walnuts or oysters, kept on hand to give quick sauces a background of meaty depth.