Quail on Toast
Dry-pick them, singe them with paper, cut off heads, and legs at first joint, draw, split down the back, soak in salt and water for five or ten minutes, drain and dry with a cloth, lard them with bacon or butter, and rub salt over them, place on broiler and turn often, dipping two or three times into melted butter; broil about twenty minutes. Have ready as many slices of buttered toast as there are birds, and serve a bird, breast upward, on each slice. Cook squabs or any small, tender bird by this recipe.
A gridiron recipe from the era when small game birds arrived whole and unplucked. Most of the work described is butchery you can now skip; the part that needs revising is the cooking time.
- Twenty minutes is too longQuail weigh 4-6 oz dressed and the breast dries out badly past medium. Split and flattened, they need roughly 8-12 minutes total over high heat, turning often as directed. Pull them when the thigh joint reads about 165F and the breast is still faintly pink.
- "Broiler" means a gridironIn nineteenth-century usage the broiler is a gridiron or wire rack set over live coals, sometimes hinged, not the element in an oven. A charcoal or gas grill is the closest equivalent; a ridged cast-iron pan on high heat also works, though you lose the smoke.
- Skip the picking and singeingFarmed quail are sold dressed, and often already semi-boneless or butterflied. If yours are whole, split them along the backbone with shears and press flat — that is exactly what "split down the back" produces.
- The salt-and-water soakFive or ten minutes in salted water reads as a quick rinse-brine, probably to draw blood from shot birds. With clean farmed quail it is optional; if you want the seasoning effect, use a 5% brine for 30 minutes and dry the birds thoroughly, since wet skin will not brown.
- Larding with baconQuail carry almost no fat. Lay a thin bacon rasher over each breast, or simply keep to the repeated dips in melted butter — butter dipping is effectively continuous basting and is the reason this method works at all.
- The toast is functionalIt is there to absorb the juices that run out as the bird rests, so cut it thick and butter it generously. Serve breast upward, as written, so nothing drains onto the plate instead.
- Squabs need longerThe note at the end holds for small birds generally, but a squab runs 12-16 oz and wants closer to 15-18 minutes, or a sear followed by a finish in a 400F oven.
- YieldOne quail is an appetizer, two a light main course. Plan on two birds and two slices of toast per person.
Quail on toast was standard restaurant and sporting-table fare across the American South in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the bird in question — the bobwhite, still called simply "partridge" in much of the region — was abundant enough to be sold by the dozen in city markets. Its appearance in The Dixie Cook Book reflects a household economy in which game arrived from the field or the market stall whole and unprocessed, which is why the instructions begin with dry-picking and singeing rather than with heat. The toast beneath is often said to be the older service: a slab of bread served as both plate liner and sauce, catching the drippings from a bird cooked without any liquid at all. Market hunting of bobwhites was curtailed in the early twentieth century, and the quail sold today are almost entirely farm-raised, generally the Japanese coturnix — milder and considerably more tender than the wild bird this recipe was written for.