No. 2133

Quails with Bay Leaf

Cailles au Laurier

Pick, draw and singe six quails, truss for roasting (No.179). Chop up the livers, the same quantity of chicken liver and as much grated fat pork as liver; add chopped parsley, pepper, a tablespoonful of chopped shallot, a handful of bread-crumbs and one small beaten egg. Mix the ingredients well together and fill the quails with it; roast them in a moderate oven, basting over frequently with lard; drain this into a saucepan and add to it some bread-crumbs, raw ham cut in one-eighth squares, fry nicely and put in two bay leaves, moisten with thickened, gravy (No.405) and game-glaze (No.398); skim off the fat, add the juice of a lemon and also a little butter; mix well with a wire whisk, dress, and pour the sauce over the quails.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with stockpots already going, so the sauce leans on two cross-references. Everything else is straightforward roast game bird work, and the main risk is overcooking.

The hinge: cook to the stuffing, not the clockA stuffed quail is done when the forcemeat reaches 165F, which in a bird this small takes roughly 20-25 minutes. Pack the stuffing loosely so heat reaches the centre before the breast dries out.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no temperature; "moderate oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. Some modern recipes start quail hotter, around 425F for 8-10 minutes, to colour the skin before dropping the heat; the frequent basting Ranhofer calls for is doing similar work at the lower temperature.
Sourcing the birdsWild quail are not sold commercially in the United States. Farmed coturnix quail, 4-5 oz each, are widely available frozen and already picked and drawn, so the picking, drawing and singeing all disappear.
Thickened gravy (No. 405) and game-glaze (No. 398)The first is Ranhofer's brown sauce built on veal or game stock, the second a game stock reduced to a syrupy glaze; the cross-references give the exact method. In a home kitchen, use about a cup of good demi-glace plus a tablespoon of heavily reduced brown poultry or game stock. Do not substitute canned gravy, which is mostly starch and salt.
Raw hamNineteenth-century "raw ham" means dry-cured but uncooked: prosciutto, serrano, or American country ham. It is cut in eighth-inch dice here and fried, so a thicker slice off the piece works better than sliced deli ham.
Grated fat porkFresh pork back fat or unsmoked fatback, frozen firm and grated on a box grater. Fatty ground pork will do; salt pork will not, unless you rinse it and cut the seasoning elsewhere.
Basting fatLard is still the right choice for flavour and its high smoke point, but clarified butter behaves the same way. Basting fat that has scorched will make the sauce bitter, so keep the pan juices moving and add a spoonful of stock if the bottom darkens.
The bay leavesTwo leaves in a small quantity of sauce is assertive; steep them while the sauce reduces and lift them out before the lemon and butter go in. Taste as you go.
Finishing and yieldThe lemon juice and butter go in off the heat, whisked in so the butter emulsifies rather than splits. Six quails serve three as a main course or six as a first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print, which is why quail appear here in many variations while a household cookbook of the same decade might offer one. Quail were then genuinely plentiful game, shot in quantity and sold in market stalls; the collapse of wild bobwhite populations and the later bans on the sale of wild game moved quail from the market to the game farm. The dish itself is a small exercise in classic economy: the birds' own livers, stretched with chicken liver and pork fat, become the stuffing, and the fat rendered during roasting becomes the base of the sauce. Cailles au laurier means simply quails with bay, and the bay is doing what a single dominant aromatic often does in this book, giving an otherwise rich liver-and-ham sauce one clear line to hang on.