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Quails with Green Peas
Singe, draw and truss the quails as for boiling, place them in a stewpan with a piece of butter, and fry till they are nicely browned; then put in one-half pound of streaky bacon, blanched and cut into squares, one and one-half pints of green peas, one onion, a bunch of parsley, salt, and a sufficient quantity of broth to cook them in. Place the lid on the stewpan and let the contents simmer by the side of the fire for fifteen minutes. When cooked drain the quails and cut off the strings. Remove the parsley and onion from the peas, stir a piece of kneaded flour and butter in with them, turn the peas onto a hot dish, put the quails round on the peas, with the legs toward the center, brush them over with melted glaze, and serve.
A classic braise of small birds finished on a bed of peas, written for a coal range where a pan could be pulled to the cooler side. The whole thing hinges on the fifteen minutes: quail is lean and turns to sawdust if it goes further.
- The birdsFarmed coturnix quail run 4-6 oz dressed and come already drawn; two per person is normal, one if the rest of the menu is long. "Trussed as for boiling" means legs folded tight against the body and tied so the birds hold a compact shape in the liquid.
- TimingFifteen minutes at a bare simmer is right for birds this size and should not be stretched. Pull them when the thickest part of the thigh reaches about 165F; the breast will be just past pink and still moist.
- "By the side of the fire"On a range this meant the cooler edge of the stovetop, where a covered pan holds below a boil. Use the lowest burner setting, and check that the liquid is only shivering.
- Streaky bacon, blanchedStreaky bacon is American-style belly bacon. Period bacon was much saltier and smokier than most supermarket bacon, which is why it is blanched first; with modern bacon a 2-minute blanch is still worth doing to keep the pea liquor from going salty, or substitute unsmoked pancetta.
- The peasA pint and a half means shelled peas by volume, roughly 3 cups or about 1 lb shelled, which is 2 to 3 lb in the pod. Frozen petits pois work and need only the last 5 minutes in the pan, or the fresh peas can go in from the start as written and will end up soft in the French manner.
- Kneaded flour and butterThis is beurre manié: equal weights soft butter and flour worked to a paste, about 1 tablespoon of each here, whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. It binds the pea liquor into a light sauce off the heat in a minute or two.
- Melted glazeGlaze is glace de viande, brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A spoonful warmed and brushed on gives the birds gloss; commercial demi-glace or veal stock reduced hard does the same job. It is cosmetic, not structural.
- BrothEnough to come partway up the birds, not to cover them, so the peas braise rather than boil. Chicken stock is the practical choice.
Oscar Tschirky was never actually the Waldorf's chef, though the 1896 cookbook that carries his name reads like a working record of what the hotel's kitchens sent out, and this dish belongs squarely to the French repertoire those kitchens ran on: cailles aux petits pois, small birds braised over peas cooked with bacon and onion. Quail was a far more ordinary market bird in the 1890s than it is now. American bobwhite were shot commercially and sold by the brace in city game markets alongside plover, snipe and canvasback, and hotel menus of the period list them freely; the trade in wild game birds was curtailed by the Lacey Act of 1900 working alongside state game laws, which is why the quail on sale today is farmed coturnix rather than anything shot. The finishing touch, brushing the birds with melted glaze before they go round the dish, marks this as restaurant rather than domestic cooking: it assumes a stockpot always going and a pot of reduced glace kept on hand.