Potted Quail
1 dozen quail. 1 pound of veal. 1 pound of fat bacon. Seasonings and paste. Bone the birds as directed for boning fowls; a penknife may be used, and no great care is required, except to get all the meat and not tear the sides to tatters. Cut each in two. Chop the veal and bacon together into sausage meat, and season with a teaspoonful of mixed mace, cloves and white pepper, and the same of salt, and a teaspoonful of finely minced lemon rind. Select a jar or two small ones that the quail may be kept in after cooking, spread a thin layer of the veal and bacon forcemeat on the bottom, lay the halves of quail in order on that, spread them with a little of the forcemeat and so on till all are in, having forcemeat for the top. Cover with a thin slice or two of bacon, then with a crust of flour and water paste and bake by setting the jar in a pan of water in the oven, for three hours. When done take off the crust and drain away the fat and gravy and press by placing a small plate inside on the meat and a weight on that. When cold cover with clarified butter and cover tightly to exclude the air. In case bacon is not liked in such potting as the two preceding, fresh butter sufficient to cover and bake the meat or birds in can be used instead.
This is a preserving recipe, not simply a baked terrine: the finished birds are pressed, sealed under a layer of clarified butter and stored to be eaten over days or weeks. That final step is where it fails by modern standards, and the failure cannot be fixed by adjusting the oven.
- The butter seal is the problemClarified butter poured over cooled meat creates a largely oxygen-free environment over a low-acid, high-moisture food. Those are the conditions in which Clostridium botulinum spores can germinate and produce toxin, often with no smell, gas or off flavour to warn the cook. Nothing in the recipe acidifies the meat or holds it at a temperature that would destroy the spores.
- No temperature anywhereThe instruction is three hours in a jar set in a pan of water in an unspecified oven. A water bath caps the contents at boiling point, which kills bacteria but not botulinum spores; commercial potted meats are processed under pressure well above that. There is no way to read a safe process out of what is written here.
- Storage is assumed to be cool, and was notStorage temperature is unstated -- The recipe assumes a cool larder rather than a modern heated kitchen. It says only to cover tightly to exclude the air, and gives no storage temperature, no headspace control and no shelf life.
- Pressing and draining add handling riskAfter baking, the crust is removed, the fat drained and a plate and weight applied while the meat cools. Those steps reintroduce bacteria to a cooked product that is then sealed away from air rather than refrigerated.
- Boning a dozen quailThe technique itself is sound and the note that no great care is required is accurate for potting, since the birds are halved and layered rather than presented whole. Farmed quail from a butcher are the practical source; rules on selling or passing on wild-shot birds vary by jurisdiction.
- If you want the dishTerrines and potted game are still made, but under measured cure quantities, recorded core temperatures and refrigerated storage with a stated use-by date. Work from a current recipe that gives all three.
Potting was the English larder's answer to the problem of a glut: meat, fish or game cooked down, packed tight into an earthenware pot and sealed under a cap of clarified butter that kept air, and therefore mould, off the surface. The flour-and-water paste crust here is often called a huff paste, though that name properly belongs to a coarse paste used to encase the meat itself; in any case it is not meant to be eaten but to act as a lid during the long, gentle bake in a water bath. Quail were a natural candidate: small, plentiful in season, tedious to serve individually, and improved by the veal-and-bacon forcemeat that fills out their meagre flesh. The seasoning of mace, cloves, white pepper and lemon rind is generally taken to be the usual English potting mixture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.