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Quails in Cases
Singe and draw the quails and remove half of the backbones. Fry the livers of the quails with the same quantity of chicken's livers in a small quantity of rasped bacon fat and season them with pepper and salt. When cold pound the fried livers with an equal quantity of chopped ham and some chopped truffles. Stuff the truffles with half of the prepared forcemeat, truss them, place them in a stewpan with a little butter and fry until half cooked. Mix with the remainder of the forcemeat two or three tablespoonfuls of cooked fine herbs. Spread a layer of it in the bottom of the required number of oiled oval-shaped paper cases and place a quail in each; spread two sheets of paper over a baking sheet, put the cases on it and bake them in a moderate oven for twenty minutes or so. When the birds are cooked take the cases up, place them on a hot dish, pour in each a small quantity of sauce that has been reduced in Madeira, and serve.
A classic en caisse preparation: the bird is boned at the back, stuffed with a liver forcemeat, part-cooked, then finished in an individual paper case. Two things need translating before you start — the vessel and the oven.
- An obvious typo"Stuff the truffles with half of the prepared forcemeat, truss them" should read stuff the quails. The forcemeat goes into the birds through the opened back; the truffles are already chopped into it.
- Moderate oven350F. The double sheet of paper under the cases is insulation, to keep the bottoms from scorching before the birds are done — a sheet pan set inside a second sheet pan does the same job.
- Paper casesOval caisses of stiff parchment, brushed inside with oil so they neither burn nor stick. Small oval parchment papillote pouches or individual foil-lined parchment boats will hold their shape; standard pleated cupcake liners will not.
- Rasped bacon fatBacon fat scraped or shredded from the rind and rendered as the livers fry. A spoonful of rendered bacon fat or lard is the equivalent.
- Cooked fine herbsFines herbes — parsley, chervil, tarragon and chive, chopped fine and softened briefly in butter, sometimes with shallot, so they are cooked rather than raw when they go into the forcemeat.
- The quailsFarmed quail, 4-6 oz each, are what is available and they are what this now means; in the US wild game birds cannot legally be sold. Buy them whole rather than semi-boneless if you intend to remove half the backbone as directed. Cook to 165F at the thigh.
- Sauce reduced in MadeiraThe recipe names no sauce, which implies a kitchen with a brown sauce already made. A well-reduced brown veal or game stock finished with Madeira and mounted with butter is the likely intent o no no more, or the paper softens.
- Yield and timingOne bird per case, one or two cases per person as a course. The birds are fried until half cooked before they go in, so the twenty minutes in the oven is the finish, not the whole cooking.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel — but the 1896 Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf collected the hotel's kitchen repertoire, which was French haute cuisine as New York's monied classes expected to eat it. Cooking small birds en caisse or en papillote was a standard escoffier-era device: the paper traps the juices and the aromatics, and the case travels to the table so nothing is lost between range and diner. Quail appears constantly in American hotel menus of the 1890s because game was still a commercial commodity, bought by the barrel from market hunters and shipped in on ice. That trade was on the verge of collapse; the Lacey Act of 1900 restricted interstate traffic in illegally taken game, and state bans on the sale of wild birds followed through the early twentieth century. Within a generation the quail on a restaurant menu meant a farmed bird, as it does today.