Broiled Quail
Split through the back and broil over a hot fire, basting frequently with butter. When done place a bit of butter on each piece, and set in oven a few moments to brown. Serve on pieces of toast with currant jelly. Plovers are cooked in the same way. Pigeons should be first parboiled and then broiled.
A four-line recipe that assumes a live coal fire and a cook standing over it. The technique translates directly to a charcoal grill or an overhead broiler, but the timing needs stating, because the book gives none.
- The hinge: watch the clock, not the birdA quail split flat cooks through in roughly 6 to 10 minutes total over high direct heat, turning once. Left on the fire for the twenty minutes a chicken would want, the breast goes dry and livery, which is the usual reason people decide they dislike quail.
- "Split through the back"This is spatchcocking. Cut down either side of the backbone or straight through it with shears, then press the bird flat so it lies against the grate in one plane. Flattening is what makes the fast cooking possible.
- A hot fireCoals you cannot hold a hand over for more than two seconds, or a broiler element preheated ten minutes with the rack about 4 inches below it. The point is to colour the skin before the small amount of meat overcooks.
- The finishing oven"A few moments to brown" implies a hot oven; the book gives no temperature, but around 425F for two or three minutes with butter melting over the top will do it. It is a glazing step, not further cooking.
- DonenessRestaurant practice serves quail breast slightly pink at the bone; USDA guidance for all poultry is 165F at the thickest point of the thigh. Choose knowingly, and note that farmed quail from a supermarket is the norm now rather than shot birds.
- PloversDo not act on that sentence lightly. Plovers and nearly all other shorebirds are protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, where taking or selling them is illegal. In the UK the Wildlife and Countryside Act protects wild birds generally, though golden plover remains a quarry species with an open season and sale is restricted. In 1883 they were market game.
- PigeonsThe parboiling advice applies to older wild pigeons with tough legs. Farmed squab, which is what butchers sell, is tender and should be broiled directly like the quail; parboiling it wastes the flavour into the water.
- Currant jelly and toastRed currant jelly is still sold, usually near the preserves; a tart quince or crabapple jelly stands in. The toast is structural as much as anything, soaking the butter and juices that run out of the split bird.
- YieldAllow two birds per person as a main course, one as a first course. A quail dresses out at about 4 ounces.
Quail on toast with currant jelly was a common American formula for small game birds through the nineteenth century, and the pairing of game with a tart red jelly is inherited from English cookery, where currant or rowan jelly went with venison and grouse. What dates this entry is the casual instruction that plovers are cooked the same way: in 1883, when The Dixie Cook Book appeared, wild songbirds and shorebirds were shot commercially and sold by the barrel in city markets, and a cookbook could reasonably assume a reader might have a dozen plovers to deal with. That trade is what the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 were written to end. The quail itself survived the shift into farming, which is why this recipe can still be followed more or less as written.