No. 2126

Quails, Piedmontese Style

Cailles a la Piemontaise

Bone the breasts of four or five clean quails, fill in the empty space with a baked forcemeat (No.81) and truffles, mingled with a little raw forcemeat (No.91); truss and cook smothered with Madeira wine and gravy. Have one quart of water, half a pound of polenta, and a piece of butter and some salt and with it prepare a mush; as soon as done, finish with a handful of parmesan and another piece of butter. With this preparation fill a buttered border mold (Fig.139) and keep it warm. Fry quickly in butter about fifteen small Chipolata sausages (No.754), drain, cut them apart and glaze over with a brush. At the last moment, lift up the quails and cut each one in two, unmold the polenta border on a hot dish, dress the quails pyramidically in the center and lay the halved sausages in a circle on top of the border, cover the border and sausages with Piedmontese brown sauce (No.519).

← No. 2125 Quails a la Mirepoix Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2127 Quails a la Talleyrand—Breasts →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots and numbered forcemeats already on hand; the dish reduces to three separate operations that meet on the platter. Read the polenta timing first, since it is the part that will not wait.

The hinge: don't overcook the quailBoned, stuffed quail will likely need only about 15-20 minutes covered (the recipe gives no time); the breast meat is lean and turns dry and livery past that. Ranhofer's "smothered" here means cooked covered with a little Madeira and brown gravy over gentle heat.
"Bone the breasts"This means lifting out the breastbone and rib cage through the back or neck while leaving the bird whole, so the cavity can be packed and the bird trussed back into shape. Wing and leg bones stay in. A butcher will do it, or buy semi-boned quail.
The two forcemeatsThe recipe itself calls No. 81 a baked forcemeat and No. 91 a raw one; together they give a stuffing that holds its shape but stays moist. In practice, a coarse chicken-and-pork farce bound with a little raw chicken mousseline and chopped truffle does the same work. Truffle matters to the Piedmontese character of the dish, but a good truffle butter or paste carries it.
Polenta proportionsOne quart water to half a pound of polenta is about 4 cups to roughly a cup and a third to a cup and a half of coarse cornmeal, in the same range as modern directions. Cook it out fully, 30-40 minutes for genuine coarse meal, or it will taste raw under the sauce.
Border moldA ring mold, buttered, filled with the hot polenta and kept warm (a bain-marie is one way). Polenta stiffens as it cools, so unmold before it has set hard. A round cake pan with a small bowl set in the centre improvises the shape.
ChipolatasRanhofer's No. 754 chipolata is a small fresh sausage, not the herby British breakfast link and not a smoked cocktail sausage; check the numbered recipe for its actual seasoning. About fifteen small ones for four or five birds; "glaze over with a brush" means painting them with reduced meat glaze for shine.
Piedmontese brown sauceNo. 519 is the book's own Piedmontese brown sauce; consult it rather than assuming its composition. A well-reduced veal demi-glace with Madeira and shaved truffle is a workable stand-in; keep it thin enough to coat rather than blanket.
YieldFour or five quails cut in two serves four as a course, or two as a main. Everything but the final assembly can be done ahead; the polenta and the sauce are what must be hot at the moment of unmolding.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's service manual, which is why almost every recipe leans on a numbered forcemeat or sauce elsewhere in the book. "A la Piemontaise" in the nineteenth-century French repertoire is shorthand for polenta, and is often said to imply white truffle as well, the things Piedmont was taken to supply to grand cookery - the region's Alba truffles and its maize mush, which is generally traced to peasant cookery in the Po valley and arrived on restaurant menus dressed with butter and parmesan. The chipolata garnish and the pyramid of split birds on a molded border are staging, though the birds are halved and plated in the kitchen rather than carved at the table. Quail at this date would generally have been wild and netted; today they are farmed, which is the main practical difference between Ranhofer's birds and the ones a cook buys now.