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Broiled Woodhens
Draw the birds, and truss them with their legs tucked into the body; singe, and split them into halves lengthwise, beat each piece lightly, season and brush them over with clarified butter, and coat them with breadcrumbs. Grease a gridiron, heat it, put the pieces of birds on it, and broil over a clear but moderate fire; turn to brown both sides. When done arrange them on a hot dish, garnish them with parsley, and serve with a sauceboatful of cold tartar sauce. Woodhens, Russian Style Singe and truss the birds as for roasting, season with salt and pepper, put them into a stewpan with a lump of butter, and fry them over a moderate fire till nicely browned. Pour a small quantity of cream over the birds, and finish cooking them, basting frequently with it. When cooked, drain the birds, and arrange them on a dish that will bear the heat of the oven. Mix about one breakfast cupful of bechamel sauce with the cooking sauce of the birds, and boil it till reduced to a thick consistency. Pour the sauce over the birds, cover them thickly with breadcrumbs and place the dish in the oven. When the breadcrumbs are browned, remove from the oven, garnish with watercress and slices of lemon, and serve.
Cold Dishes. Tenderloin of Beef in Aspic Trim well a small tenderloin of beef and make a deep incision down the thin side. Chop fine some lean veal, passing it through a fine hair-sieve, returning it to the mortar, and mix with an equal quantity of chopped beef suet and about a third that amount of panada; pound well together and season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, bind it together with beaten eggs, and mix in some truffles, beef tongue and whites of hard-boiled eggs, all cut into small slices. Stuff the tenderloin with the forcemeat; cover it first with slices of celery, then with cooked ham, and lastly with thin slices of fat bacon, and tie up. Place the beef in a braisingpan with two calves feet and some stock, and stew the meat two or three hours and until tender over a slow fire. When cooked, take the beef out of the liquor and leave it until quite cold. Strain the liquor through a fine hair-sieve into a basin and leave it until it is set; strain off all fat, and rub it over with a cloth dipped in hot water to remove all traces of grease; clarify the liquor and pass through a silk sieve. Pour a small quantity of the liquor into a mould which will hold the tenderloin, and place on ice until thoroughly set. Trim it at both ends, and cut some small pieces of hard-boiled eggs, tongue and truffles, which arrange in tasteful designs on the set jelly; pour in enough of the jelly stock to cover them, and allow it to become quite firm; then lay the tenderloin on the jelly, the top turned downward, and pour in the balance of the clarified liquor. When ready for serving, dip the mould into tepid water to loosen the jelly at the sides, wipe, and turn the contents onto a dish, garnishing to taste, and serve.
Oscar's text runs three recipes together without a break; the notes below apply to the broiled woodhens that head the page. It is a straightforward crumbed, split-bird grill, and the only real difficulty is sourcing the bird.
- What a woodhen isThe name is unstable in period cookbooks and may cover various small woodland game birds; hotel menus of this date sometimes used it for hazel grouse (gelinotte) or a grouse hen, and it is elsewhere a name for a New Zealand rail. Wild-taken game birds generally cannot be sold in the United States, so unless you have a hunter in the family, substitute two quail per person, or a spatchcocked poussin or Cornish hen.
- Draw and singe"Draw" means remove the innards; "singe" means burn off the pinfeathers and down, originally over a flame. Birds bought today come plucked and drawn, though quail often keep a few pinfeathers worth pulling with tweezers.
- Split and flattenSplit lengthwise through the breastbone and backbone, then "beat each piece lightly" — a firm press with the flat of a heavy knife or a couple of taps with a mallet. This is the hinge of the recipe: an unflattened half-bird cooks unevenly and the thick side is still raw when the crumbs are dark.
- Clarified butter, not wholeWhole butter's milk solids scorch and turn the crumb coating bitter over coals. Clarify it, or use ghee. The butter is also what makes the breadcrumbs adhere, so brush generously.
- A clear but moderate fireCharcoal burned down to grey-ashed coals with no flame, or a gas grill at a moderate rather than fierce setting. The crumbs need to brown at about the same rate the bird cooks; over high heat they blacken in two minutes.
- TimingQuail halves take about 4-5 minutes a side, a poussin half 8-10. Poultry and farmed game birds should reach 165F at the thickest part of the thigh. Oscar gives no time at all, which was normal in a kitchen where a cook judged by touch.
- The sauceCold tartar sauce against a hot crumbed bird is deliberate, and it carries most of the flavour of the dish — mayonnaise with capers, cornichons, shallot and a little of their vinegar. Make it before you light the fire.
- YieldOscar gives no yield. Reckon one small bird — two halves — per person as a main course, more if the birds are as small as quail; one half as a first course. Serve immediately, since crumb coatings soften fast on a covered dish.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the repertoire of a hotel that fed New York's wealthy at the moment American game cookery was about to change permanently. Small wild birds — woodcock, plover, snipe, grouse, canvasback — were market commodities in the 1890s, shipped in barrels to city restaurants, and a page like this one, moving casually from broiled woodhens to woodhens in cream to a tenderloin in aspic, assumes a kitchen that could order a dozen of almost anything. Market hunting on that scale was curtailed by the Lacey Act of 1900 and finished off by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, after which wild game birds effectively left the American restaurant menu and stayed off it. The technique here, though, long outlived the ingredient: splitting a small bird, flattening it, crumbing it and grilling it over coals is close kin to the French treatments known as à la diable, with its mustard-and-crumb coating, and en crapaudine, in which the bird is kept whole, split and opened out flat rather than halved — and it is still the best thing to do with a quail.