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Chaudfroid of Quails
Draw and clean the birds well, remove the breasts and backbones, but leave the legs. Cut four ounces of fat bacon into small pieces, fry it for a few minutes and then add one-half pound of calf's liver also cut up, one chopped carrot and onion, a bunch of sweet herbs and seasoning of salt and pepper and grated nutmeg. When well cooked pound the above mixture in a mortar until it is quite smooth, then pass it through a fine hair-sieve. Stuff the birds with the liver forcemeat. Tie each one separately in a piece of muslin and place them in a stewpan. Chop the bones of the birds and put them in with them, add some chopped vegetables, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme, one-half pint of stock and one teacupful of sherry. When boiling move the stewpan to the side of the fire and allow the contents to simmer gently for thirty minutes or so. When cooked remove the birds from the stewpan, drain and press them lightly between two dishes. Strain the cooking liquor of the birds through a silk sieve, return it to the stewpan and boil until reduced to a glaze. Remove the pieces of muslin from the quails, baste them with the glaze several times in order to coat them well, and leave them until cold. When ready arrange the birds in a circle on a dish, garnish them with chopped aspic jelly, fill the center with small salad, and serve.
A cold, glazed game dish from the Waldorf's larder, written for a kitchen with a coal range, a marble mortar and a garde-manger. Nothing in it is difficult, but the original assumes a good deal of knowledge it does not state.
- What chaudfroid means hereClassic chaudfroid coats the bird in a gelatin-set sauce, white (velouté-based) or brown. Oscar's version works instead from the cooking liquor: it is reduced to a syrupy meat glaze and brushed on in layers as the birds cool, each coat setting from the natural gelatin in the bones. The hinge of the dish is that reduction — stop while it still flows off a spoon in a thick ribbon, because a glaze taken too far scorches, turns bitter and will not brush out smoothly.
- Boning the birds"Remove the breasts and backbones, but leave the legs" means removing the breastbone and spine to make a pocket while keeping the leg bones in place, so the bird holds its shape. Reserve every scrap of bone; it is chopped and simmered with the birds and supplies the gelatin that makes the glaze set.
- Quantities and yieldThe recipe does not say how many birds it is for. The forcemeat — 4 oz bacon and 8 oz liver plus vegetables — should be enough for roughly six to eight quail. Serve two birds per person as a first course or main salad course, one as part of a longer menu.
- Liquid measuresHalf a pint of stock is one US cup. A teacupful in American books of this period is usually reckoned at roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, not the modern 8 oz measuring cup. Between the two you have a little under a pint of liquid to start with, which is why it reduces to a glaze so quickly — expect only a few tablespoons at the end, and watch it closely in the last minutes.
- Calf's liverStill sold, though you may need a butcher. Chicken livers are the usual substitute and are milder; use the same weight. Cook the liver through but no further — overcooked liver goes grainy and no amount of pounding and sieving will make it smooth again.
- Mortar and hair sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds. The sieving is not optional if you want the Waldorf texture: push the purée through a fine-mesh strainer with a rubber spatula to catch the sinew and the fibrous bits of carrot. A drum sieve is faster if you own one.
- Muslin wrappingCheesecloth, doubled, tied at both ends like a small parcel, keeps the stuffed birds compact while they poach. Plastic wrap and foil are the modern equivalent for a poached galantine, but cheesecloth is what lets the cooking liquor take on flavour from the birds, which matters here because that liquor becomes the glaze.
- Heat and timing"Move the stewpan to the side of the fire" means a bare simmer — surface barely trembling, around 180-190F. Thirty minutes is on the long side for quail that size, but the stuffing has to come up to temperature too; check the forcemeat at the centre reads 165F and pull the birds then rather than running the clock out.
- Cooling and keepingPress the birds between two plates with light weight while warm, then glaze and chill. Because this is served cold, keep it refrigerated and eat within two days; the glazing and garnishing can be done the morning of the meal. Chopped aspic can be made from a good gelatin-set consommé, cut into dice once firm.
Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold" — is French professional cookery for a dish cooked hot, coated in a sauce that sets as it cools, and served cold, and it belonged to the garde-manger, the cold larder that was a department in its own right in a hotel kitchen of Oscar Tschirky's era. The technique is generally traced to the classic French kitchen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and by the time this book appeared in 1896 it was standard for banquet buffets, where the food had to look composed after standing on a sideboard. Quail were a fixture of American hotel menus then, arriving in quantity from the market game dealers who supplied the big New York houses; the small wild birds of that trade are now largely replaced by farmed quail, which are fatter and more forgiving. The dish also shows the period's economy at a luxury level: the discarded breastbones and backs go straight back into the pot, and the gelatin they give up is what makes the glaze cling.