No. 2130

Quails in Papers

Cailles en Papillotes

Prepare eight cleaned quails by removing the bones beginning at the back and leave on one leg only, then stuff with game forcemeat (No.91) into which has been added cooked fine herbs (No.385) and a little glaze (No.402); put them into half heart-shaped bottomless molds, having them laid on a baking sheet covered with thin bards of fat pork, pour butter over and cook in a moderate oven for half an hour; leave them in their molds and set a weight on top. Fry in butter chopped shallot, mushrooms, truffles and parsley, add a quart of veloute sauce (No.415), reduce and thicken with four egg-yolks, a little cream and the juice of two strained lemons. Cut out six sheets of strong paper into heart-shapes, coat them with oil; on the right side of the heart and near the center having the point toward you, place on a layer of the cooked fine herb sauce (No.385), over this a quail, and on top another layer of the sauce; fold the paper in two forming a half heart, crimp the two edges together to enclose hermetically and then set each one on a small silver dish; place them in a slack oven for fifteen to twenty minutes and when a fine color serve, placing the hot dish from the oven on a second plate.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a stocked larder of numbered sauces, and paper rather than parchment. The dish is entirely achievable at home once you resolve the internal cross-references and the arithmetic.

The hinge: the sauce must not boil once the yolks go inA quart of veloute thickened with four yolks, cream and lemon juice will curdle the moment it simmers. Take it off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce, return it and hold it below 180F. Lemon juice added to a hot yolk sauce also accelerates curdling, so add it last and off the fire.
Quantities do not matchHe prepares eight quails and cuts six paper hearts. Follow the paper count and treat two birds as insurance, or cut eight hearts. The quart of veloute is also generous for six portions; a pint reduced with the shallot, mushroom, truffle and parsley is plenty, with the yolks scaled to two.
Oven temperatures"Moderate" for the initial half hour is conventionally read as around 350F. "Slack" is the cooler setting, usually given as somewhere in the 250 to 325F range. At that heat expect gentle heating rather than a dramatic dome; if the paper browns before twenty minutes are up the oven is too hot.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of cured fatback. Ranhofer lays them on the baking sheet under the birds and pours butter over, so the fat and butter together keep the birds from drying. Unsmoked salt pork sliced very thin, or fresh pork fatback from a butcher, does the job; caul fat is a good substitute. Streaky bacon works but pushes smoke into a deliberately delicate dish.
PapillotesParchment replaces "strong paper." Oil both sides, fold and crimp the edge in overlapping pleats, then press the final fold hard so steam cannot escape. Aluminium foil will hold the contents but will not brown or dome, which is most of the point.
The bottomless molds and the weightHalf-heart cutter rings on a baking sheet shape the boned birds while they cook; the weight applied afterward compresses them flat as they cool so each fits the paper neatly. Ring molds, or a strip of doubled foil bent into shape, and a small can as the weight.
Boning and the single legCut down the backbone, work the carcass out, remove the wing and one leg bone entirely and leave the second drumstick in place as a handle and as visual proof of what the bird was. Farmed quail sold today are small, roughly 4 to 5 oz dressed; count one per person plus the forcemeat.
The cross-referencesNo. 91 is a game forcemeat, No. 385 a cooked fine herbs preparation, No. 402 a glaze and No. 415 velouté, as the recipe's own citations indicate. A modern equivalent: a quenelle-style farce of quail or chicken with fat pork and cream, a duxelles, reduced brown stock, and a chicken velouté.
TrufflesThe recipe treats truffle as a routine seasoning alongside shallot, mushroom and parsley. A little truffle paste or a preserved truffle stirred into the finished sauce is closer to the intent than truffle oil, which reads as perfume against a mild yolk-bound velouté.
ServingBring the papillotes to the table sealed and cut them open there; the aroma released is the whole effect. His instruction to set the hot dish on a second plate is simply a service liner, easily replaced by a folded napkin.
Sourcing quailCommercial sale of wild-taken quail is effectively barred in the United States, so any bird you buy will be farmed. That is what you want here anyway, since farmed quail are uniform in size and clean enough for the boning and moulding this recipe demands.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his long service as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is characteristic of the book's late-nineteenth-century restaurant grandeur: a small bird boned, stuffed, moulded, pressed, sauced and then sealed in an oiled paper case for a second cooking. Cooking en papillote is generally traced to French practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the paper case served both to trap aroma and to make a piece of theatre at the table when it was slit open; Ranhofer here cuts the paper as a heart and folds it in two so the crimped seam runs around the curve. Quail, snipe and woodcock filled a long section of the book because game was still a staple of American luxury dining, supplied to city markets by commercial hunters. That trade was curtailed within a generation by the Lacey Act of 1900 and, for migratory species, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which is why a recipe calling for eight quail was unremarkable in 1894 and depends on farmed birds today.