No. 2127

Quails a la Talleyrand—Breasts

Filets de Cailles a la Talleyrand

Raise the fillets, suppress the skin and nerves and pare them into half hearts, season and saute with slices of raw truffles add a half-glaze sauce with Madeira (No.413). Lay them on half heart-shaped bread croutons the same size as the fillets and hollowed out, then filled with a salpicon of mushrooms mingled with half-glaze sauce made of game essence (No.389). Dress in a circle on a dish, put truffles in the center and pour the sauce over all.

← No. 2126 Quails, Piedmontese Style Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2128 Quails Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stockpot already running, so most of the work here is in the two cross-referenced sauces. Read it as a garnished sauté of quail breast rather than a roast.

The hinge: cook the breasts barely at allA skinned quail breast weighs well under an ounce and is done in roughly 60 to 90 seconds a side in hot butter. Left longer it turns dry and livery, and no amount of Madeira sauce will bring it back.
"Suppress the skin and nerves"Pull off the skin, then strip the white tendon and any silverskin from the underside of each fillet. "Pare into half hearts" means trimming each breast to a matching teardrop so the finished ring looks uniform.
Half-glazeThis is demi-glace: brown stock reduced with espagnole until it coats a spoon. Ranhofer's No. 413 is his Madeira-flavoured version; a good jarred or homemade demi-glace with a splash of dry Madeira stands in.
Game essence (No. 389)A concentrated reduction of game bones, trimmings and aromatics, used to sharpen the sauce for the crouton filling. Quail carcasses left from raising the fillets are the obvious source; roast them, cover with stock, reduce hard.
SalpiconSimply a fine, even dice, here of mushrooms, bound with enough sauce to hold together without running. Cut the dice small enough to sit neatly in a hollowed crouton.
CroutonsCut bread to the same half-heart outline as the fillets and hollow the centres to make shallow cases. Ranhofer does not say how to crisp them; frying in butter is the usual method. Fill them at the last moment or they soften.
Truffles"Raw truffles" means fresh black truffle sliced thin and warmed in the pan with the fillets. Preserved truffles in a jar are the practical substitute; they are already cooked, so add them only to heat through. Truffle oil is not a substitute and will taste synthetic against a clean Madeira sauce.
YieldTwo fillets per bird. Two or three quail per person for a main course, fewer if serving it as a small first course; the croutons are cut one per fillet.

A Little History

Dishes styled à la Talleyrand commemorate Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French diplomat whose table was as much a tool of statecraft as his dispatches and whose household employed Carême early in that cook's career. The name is generally attached to preparations built on truffles, and this one keeps to type. It appears in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast working record of his years at Delmonico's in New York, where a kitchen could afford to raise the fillets from a dozen quail and send the carcasses straight to the stockpot. The cross-references to numbered sauces are the book's real signature: much of the dish is an assembly of preparations already standing on the stove.