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Quail on Toast
Take five quail, but don't remove the skins, for you would lose all the taste of the game. Wipe them well; string them tight, so as to raise the breasts. Put a little butter substitute on each, a little lemon juice, and inside each the quarter of a lemon without the peel. Then put a very thin slice of pork, about two inches square, around each quail, with two or three cuts in each side, and string it tight. Let cook on a good fire, and when they are nearly well done (for white meat game must be well done) cut the strings; dress nicely on toast and serve hot. Pour the juice on the quail after having taken the fat off, and put some slices of lemon around the dish, one for each quail.
A plain barded-and-roasted game bird, written for a cook who kept an open fire or a coal range and judged doneness by eye. Two things need translating: the heat source and the fat.
- "A good fire"This means brisk direct heat — a spit, a gridiron, or a hot oven. In a modern kitchen, roast at 450F on a rack, or broil, turning once. Small birds want short, fierce cooking; a moderate oven will dry them before the skin colours.
- TimingFarmed quail of 4-6 oz take roughly 12-18 minutes at 450F. Current food-safety guidance for poultry is 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, which is close to the book's own instruction that "white meat game must be well done."
- Butter substituteProbably oleomargarine, though vegetable shortenings and lard were also sold as butter substitutes in this period. Butter is the obvious swap and tastes better here; anything you use is mainly there to keep the breast from scorching.
- The thin slice of porkThis is barding — salt pork or unsmoked fatback, sliced about 1/8 inch and cut at the edges so it drapes over the breast. Bacon works but brings smoke and cure the original did not intend. Remove it, or the last few minutes uncovered, if you want the skin browned.
- StringingTrussing with kitchen twine, tied firmly enough to push the breast up and hold the pork in place. Cut it off before the birds go on the toast, as the recipe says, or the shape collapses when carved.
- The birds themselvesWild quail are not sold commercially in the United States; what you buy is farmed, usually semi-boneless or whole, and likely a different bird from the wild bobwhite the recipe would have assumed. Whole birds with skin on are what the method requires. If a hunter has given you wild quail, check for shot.
- Toast and the pan juicesUse a firm white bread, cut thick, toasted dry — it is there to catch the juices, so soft sandwich bread turns to paste. Skim the fat from the roasting pan, then spoon the remaining juices over the birds just before serving.
- YieldFive quail serve two or three people as a main course, or five as a first course.
Quail on toast was a fixture of American hotel and club menus in the late nineteenth century, when market hunters supplied bobwhite to city game dealers; the dish is small, quick, and showy, which is exactly what a restaurant kitchen wants. The bird set on a slab of toast is an old European convention for any small game — the bread stands in for a plate and absorbs what would otherwise be lost — and it survived into American cookery almost unchanged. The instruction to use "butter substitute" is telling: oleomargarine had become respectable enough that a cookbook could specify it without apology. Commerce in wild game birds was being shut down mainly by state laws, with the federal Lacey Act of 1900 restricting interstate traffic in illegally taken game.