No. 2136

California Quails a la Monterey

Cailles de Californie a la Monterey

Having drawn and singed six California quails leave the breast skin as long as possible without breaking it. Peel half a pound of truffles, chop up the peelings and cut the truffles in half inch square pieces, season with No.1 spices (No.168), then add the livers, a few chicken livers, a little brandy, a soupcon of garlic and four ounces of fresh butter; stuff the quails with this and truss them for an entree (No.178), cover with thin bards of fat pork tying it on with three rows of string, run a skewer through and range them on the spit; put to the fire for about three-quarters of an hour, then unwrap and dress on hollow crusts forming them into a circle; cover with half-glaze sauce (No.413) finished with essence of truffles (No.395) and fill the center with cooked and turned small mushroom heads, turned olives and small game quenelles made with a coffeespoon (No.155); pour some sauce into this garnishing, serving more separately.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote this for a brigade with a spit, a truffle budget and a sauce station already running. The dish is workable at home if you accept two substitutions and cut the cooking time by more than half.

The hinge: leave the neck skin longThe hinge: leave the skin long -- Ranhofer says to keep the breast skin "as long as possible without breaking it," which suggests the skin is meant to be drawn over and hold the truffle-and-liver stuffing in place; the recipe itself only says to stuff the birds. Break the skin at the neck end and the butter runs out into the pan.
TimingThree-quarters of an hour on a spit assumes a fire that is far from the bird and a good deal of turning. Quail weigh 4-6 oz dressed; in a 425F oven they are done in 15-20 minutes, and past that the breast is dry no matter how much fat pork is tied on. Judge by the thigh juices, not the clock.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of pork back fat, cut wide enough to wrap the breast. Caul fat or thinly sliced unsmoked streaky bacon does the same job; smoked bacon will bury the truffle.
No. 1 spicesRanhofer's numbered spice blends (his No. 168) are ground mixtures along the lines of pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves and dried herbs, in differing proportions. Any well-balanced quatre-epices with a little dried thyme reads much the same way here.
Half a pound of trufflesNot a realistic quantity now. A few ounces of fresh black truffle, or good preserved truffle plus a little of its juice in place of the "essence of truffles," gives the same effect; the peelings are meant to be chopped fine and worked into the butter so nothing is wasted.
Half-glaze sauceDemi-glace: reduced brown veal or game stock thickened lightly. A game stock made from the quail backs and trimmings, reduced hard and finished with a spoonful of truffle liquor, is closer to the intent than any jarred substitute.
Hollow crustsCroustades: rounds of stale bread hollowed out and fried or oven-crisped in butter. They give the birds height in the circle Ranhofer arranges them in; the sauce is poured over them regardless.
Turned mushrooms and olives"Turned" means pared with a small knife into neat uniform shapes; button mushroom caps and pitted green olives trimmed to match. Purely visual, and safely skipped.
YieldSix quail, one per person as a course in a long dinner. As a main dish, allow two birds.
SourcingFarmed quail, sold dressed and often boneless, is what you will find; California quail is a wild game bird taken under licence and season. Farmed birds are fattier and more forgiving than the wild ones Ranhofer had.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its game chapters show how far the restaurant's supply lines reached: California quail, shot in the West and shipped east — plausibly once refrigerated rail cars made that practical — arrived as a luxury novelty on a menu that already had European partridge and American canvasback. The "a la Monterey" tag looks like the kitchen's habit of naming a preparation for the place the bird came from rather than for anything Montereyan in the method — the stuffing of truffles, livers, brandy and butter under the breast skin, the barding, the demi-glace and the garnish of quenelles and turned vegetables are all standard Paris practice of the 1860s and 70s, which is where Ranhofer trained. The dish is a good measure of the period's idea of luxury: half a pound of truffles for six birds that between them yield perhaps a pound of meat.