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Ortolans in Cases
Pluck, draw, and singe one dozen ortolans, and put them into small cases masked with Perigueux sauce, putting their heads through a hole cut for the purpose. Place them in a quick oven for a few minutes, or they may be salamandered, and when they are done, damp them with a little more of the perigueux, and serve. Care must be taken in drawing them to take out their gizzards.
This dish cannot be made today, and not because of any technique. Its single ingredient is a songbird that is now protected across its entire range.
- The bird is protectedThe ortolan is Emberiza hortulana, the ortolan bunting, a small European migratory songbird. It is protected under European law and its hunting, capture, sale and possession are prohibited; France, where the trade persisted longest, banned it outright and has prosecuted suppliers. There is no legal source for a dozen ortolans, wild or farmed.
- No substitute is meant hereQuail and other small game birds are sometimes offered as stand-ins, but they are not the same thing. The traditional appeal of ortolan lay in eating a fat-gorged bird whole, bones and all, which is what the trapping and fattening practice -- birds confined in darkness and gorged on grain -- supplied. A current recipe for quail or squab is a different dish and should be followed on its own terms.
- "Drawn" here is minimalThe instruction to remove only the gizzard, leaving the rest of the viscera in place, was standard for small birds treated as a single mouthful. Applied to any bird you could legally buy today it is not good practice; poultry and game birds are drawn completely.
- CasesThe "cases" are individual paper or fireproof porcelain cases, not a casserole. "Masked" means lined or coated with sauce, and the recipe has the heads pushed through a hole cut in the case for presentation.
- Perigueux sauceA demi-glace finished with Madeira and chopped truffle, named for Périgueux in the truffle country of the Dordogne. It is the one component of this entry still worth knowing, and it belongs with almost any small roast bird or a fillet of beef.
- SalamanderedBrowned under a salamander, the overhead gas or charcoal broiler of a professional kitchen. A modern broiler element does the same job. "Quick oven" in period usage means a hot oven; no temperature is given here.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel rather than its chef, and the book that carries his name, published in 1896, draws on the French repertoire of the period, in which ortolan ranked as a luxury: buntings were netted on autumn migration in France, fattened in the dark, and served whole in individual cases as a savoury climax to a long menu. A set of rituals attached to the bird, including the napkin drawn over the head of the diner, variously explained as concentrating the aroma or as concealing the act; how old that practice is, and how widely it was actually observed, is not documented. By the later twentieth century numbers had fallen sharply across western Europe and the bird passed from delicacy to protected species. Entries like this one are the reason old hotel cookbooks are worth reading as documents rather than as instructions: they record, without comment, what a fashionable dining room could simply order in by the dozen.