No. 2311

Quail Patties—Small

Petits Pates de Cailles

Bone thoroughly three or four quails; divide each one in two parts, season and cover the inside with forcemeat (No. 81) in which has been added half as much raw game forcemeat (No. 91) and chopped truffles, and season with game pie spices (No. 168); envelop, giving the quail an oval shape. Cut some layers of pie paste (No. 145) into ovals seven inches by four inches; on the center of one put a thin slice of fat pork (No. 110); over this spread a thin layer of chopped game forcemeat (No. 66), place half a quail on top and moisten the paste all around; wrapping with this paste, fold over the side, then roll out the paste on each end, moisten the top of the paste and bring the two ends together on the top; cover the paste with a thin oval layer of puff paste (No. 145). Make a small opening in the top, range the patties on a baking sheet, egg them over, make fanciful cuts with the tip of a knife, and cook for forty minutes in a moderate oven. Pour into the opening a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413) and Madeira.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stocked larder, so half this recipe lives in cross-references to other numbers. Here is what those are and what matters when you build the patties yourself.

The cross-referenced numbersNo. 81 a forcemeat, No. 91 a raw game forcemeat, No. 66 a chopped game forcemeat, No. 110 fat pork, No. 145 the pie and puff pastes, No. 168 a game pie spice, No. 413 a half-glaze. In a home kitchen a single well-seasoned forcemeat of quail trim, pork shoulder and fatback, bound with egg and cream and studded with chopped truffle, stands in for all three meat mixtures.
Game pie spicesNo. 168 is a dry spice blend of the quatre épices type. A commercial quatre épices with a little dried thyme and bay is a reasonable stand-in.
Fat porkThin slices of pork back fat used as barding, not bacon. Ask a butcher for fatback; smoked bacon will dominate quail entirely.
Boning the quailTunnel-bone or spatchcock-and-bone the birds, leaving the skin intact. Farmed quail run 4-6 oz each, so three or four birds give six to eight patties — one or two per person as an entrée course.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350F. Forty minutes at that heat suits a pastry parcel of this size; the quail is fully cooked well before the pastry colours, which is why the barding fat and the enclosing forcemeat are there.
The hinge: seal every seamMoisten and press each fold, and set the puff-paste lid on damp pastry. If the parcel splits, the forcemeat juices run out onto the sheet and the quail steams dry rather than confits in its own fat.
The vent and the sauceThe opening in the top is functional — it lets steam escape so the seams hold. Keep it open with a small foil or paper chimney. The demi-glace and Madeira go in hot, off the oven, just before serving; poured in early they only dilute the pastry.
Pastry dimensionsSeven by four inches of pie paste per patty is generous by modern standards. Roll it thin, around 1/8 inch, or the underside will be raw when the top is browned.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the food he served over three decades at Delmonico's in New York. Quail were a fixture of the American restaurant table in that era, arriving by the barrel from market hunters before the game laws of the early twentieth century closed commercial traffic in wild birds; today the quail you buy are farmed, milder and fattier than the wild ones Ranhofer knew. The construction — a boned bird wrapped in forcemeat, barded, and sealed in pastry — is the small, individual descendant of the great raised game pie, and it survives in French kitchens as caille en croûte. The layered cross-referencing is itself a period artefact: The Epicurean was written as a working manual for professionals who already had the forcemeats, the pastes and the half-glaze standing ready, and who needed only to be told the assembly.