No. 2134

Quails with Mushrooms—Stuffed

Cailles Farcies aux Champignons

This entree is dressed on a foundation covered with cooked paste (No.131) having a low support fastened to the center, also covered with the same cooked paste and decorated on the upper edge with a raised border, it being spread out and open-worked (Fig.8). Bone the breasts of ten quails, fill up the empty space with a baking forcemeat (No.81), mixed with a little raw forcemeat (No.73), and a few spoonfuls of raw truffles cut in small dice; sew up the skin, truss and cover with bards of salt pork. Lay them in a deep sautoir lined with salt pork, roots and minced onions, moisten with a glassful of white wine and let reduce, then remoisten with unskimmed stock (No.194a). Boil the liquid, withdraw the pan to a slower fire to finish cooking the quails, drain them off, untruss and untie. Cut each one lengthwise in two and dress them to imitate a rosette on the foundation, standing almost upright without injuring their shapes and leaning them against the support. Fill up the empty border with a garnishing of pretty white mushrooms all of the same size; cover them as well as the quails with a little good veloute sauce (No.415), reduced with the quail stock and that of the mushrooms.

← No. 2133 Quails with Bay Leaf Quail, Snipe, Woodcock & Small Birds No. 2135 Quails with Risot →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote this for a brigade with a larder of cross-referenced preparations, and roughly half the instruction here is about presentation rather than cooking. Strip away the socle and the dish is a straightforward braise of stuffed quail with mushrooms in a reduced velouté.

The "cooked paste" foundationNo. 131 is a display paste used as an architectural base rather than as something to be eaten. Modern service can skip the socle and support entirely and build the rosette of split quail on a warm shallow platter or a round of fried bread.
Boning the breastsThis means lifting out the breastbone and ribs from inside while leaving the skin and legs intact, so the bird can be stuffed and still hold its shape. Work from the back through a slit, keep the skin unbroken, and sew or truss firmly — a burst bird will lose its forcemeat into the braise.
The two forcemeatsThe recipe combines a cooked "baking" forcemeat (No. 81) with a little raw forcemeat (No. 73), the raw element binding the mixture as it sets. In practice a fine pork-and-liver farce loosened with a little raw chicken mousseline does similar work; allow roughly 1 oz of stuffing per bird.
Bards and the lined panBards are thin sheets of pork fatback tied over the breasts to keep them from drying. Ask a butcher for fatback sliced on the machine; thin-cut unsmoked streaky bacon is the usual stand-in, though it seasons the sauce. The salt pork lining the sautoir is there to prevent scorching and to enrich the braising liquid.
Unskimmed stockNo. 194a goes in with its fat left on, so the braise self-bastes. If you use a skimmed modern stock, add a spoonful of butter or rendered pork fat to the pan and degrease the liquid before it goes into the sauce instead.
Cooking timeFarmed quail run 4-6 oz and, stuffed, need only about 20-25 minutes at a bare simmer once the liquid has come to a boil — "a slower fire" here means the liquid barely trembling. Pull them as soon as the forcemeat is set, or the breast goes dry and grainy.
Truffles and mushroomsRaw truffle diced into the stuffing is a luxury note; a teaspoon of chopped preserved truffle or a little truffle butter carries some of it, and finely chopped sautéed cremini plus a splash of madeira is the honest substitute. The garnish mushrooms should be small, uniform white buttons, turned or left whole and cooked in butter, lemon and a little water so they stay pale.
The sauceVelouté (No. 415) is a white stock thickened with blond roux. Strain and reduce the quail braising liquid with the mushroom cooking liquor, then whisk it into the velouté and reduce again to a coating consistency — the finished sauce should nap the birds without pooling.
YieldTen quail split lengthwise gives twenty halves; as a formal entrée in a long menu that served ten, as a main course it serves five.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the book at its most characteristic: a dish conceived as much for the eye as the palate, mounted on a paste socle so the split birds could stand upright in a rosette above the table. Quail were still shot and marketed in quantity in the United States at that date — bobwhite in particular appeared on restaurant menus as "quail on toast" — and the game laws that eventually pushed commercial supply toward farmed coturnix came later. The technique of boning a small bird, refilling it with forcemeat and braising it under bards belongs to the French repertoire Ranhofer trained in, where the point of removing the bones was as much to make the bird carvable and shapely on the platter as to hold stuffing. The heavy cross-referencing to numbered foundation recipes reflects how the book was meant to be used: not by a home cook, but by a professional kitchen that already had velouté, stock and forcemeats standing ready.