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Sandwiches of Potted Quail
Make rolls, either split or rounded, but flat, and place inside a half of a potted quail, prepared according to the following receipt.
Barely a paragraph, and it leans entirely on a recipe printed just after it in the book. What follows covers what the line assumes a working cook already knows.
- The missing halfThis entry is only the assembly. The recipe it points to ("the following receipt") is the potting itself, which in this period typically meant quail cooked until tender, boned, pounded or shredded, packed into a small pot and sealed under a layer of butter. Read both before starting.
- Quail size and yieldA dressed quail runs about 4-5 oz, so half a bird gives only an ounce or so of boned meat: right for a small roll, not for a sandwich loaf. Six quail make a dozen sandwiches.
- "Flat" rollsThe instruction to make rolls "split or rounded, but flat" is not explained, but the likely reason is the pressure of the potted meat: a high domed roll crushes and the filling squeezes out the sides, while a flattened roll holds a compact slice.
- Serving temperature is the hingePotted meat straight from cold is a brick and will tear the crumb. Let it stand at cool room temperature 20-30 minutes so it spreads or slices cleanly, then assemble and serve. Do not let it sit out for hours.
- BonesQuail bones are fine, sharp and easy to miss. Pick the meat over twice by hand rather than trusting the fork; a rib splinter in a tea sandwich ends the party.
- Storage, then and nowThe butter seal was a cellar technology, meant to keep a pot for weeks in a cold larder. Treat potted quail as you would any cooked chopped meat: refrigerated, covered, and eaten within three or four days.
- Sourcing the birdsWild quail are game and seasonal; farmed quail are sold year-round, whole or semi-boneless, frozen in most cases. Farmed birds are milder and slightly fattier, which suits potting well.
Potting is an English preservation method that American cookbooks inherited: meat cooked until soft, pounded with butter and spice, packed tight and sealed with a layer of fat that keeps air off. In books of this period it often served convenience as much as keeping — a pot of seasoned meat that could be sliced or spread at short notice for buffet lunches, ball suppers and the long sequence of small sandwiches such occasions demanded. Quail was plentiful in nineteenth-century American markets, which may be why it appears here in the plainest possible instruction, with the attention going to the roll. Writing a recipe as a cross-reference to the next one is common in professional manuals of the period, which assumed a reader already at work in a kitchen.