No. 2459

Chaudfroid of Quails a la Baudy

Chaudfroid de Cailles a la Baudy

This entree is dressed on a wooden foundation covered with white paper, and bordered on the outside edge with small beads of butter forced through a cornet. It has a paper-covered support in the center two to three inches in diameter and about the same height as the quails. Singe and bone eight fresh quails, leaving on the thighs, season the insides and fill the empty space with a layer of fine galantine forcemeat (No. 66), mingled with foies-gras and truffles cut in small dice, also a piece of raw truffle in each; all of these to be properly seasoned; cover over with another layer of the forcemeat and bring the two sides together so that the quails retain their original shape, then sew them up. Truss the thighs, and tie each bird up in a separate piece of muslin. Range the quails in a deep sautoir lined with fat pork, moisten to their height with a good stock (No. 194a) and boil up the liquid, then withdraw it to a slower fire and cook the quails for twenty to thirty minutes while covered, and let them get partly cold in their stock. Drain, unwrap, and tie them up tighter in the same cloths to keep them in shape, and when quite cold cut each one lengthwise in two; fasten the two halves together with a small wooden skewer, and cover the quails with a white chaudfroid sauce (No. 596). When the sauce becomes quite cold, stick one of the reserved legs in each half bird, and withdraw the skewer. Dress these boned quails almost upright on the foundation that is on the dish, leaning them against the support; garnish the center of this with chopped jelly, and surround the base of the bottom with small crimped paper cases filled with glazed truffles.

← No. 2458 Chaudfroid of Pullet, Plain The Cold Service No. 2460 Chaudfroid of Fillets of Redhead Duck and Ve →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full Delmonico's cold-buffet showpiece: boned stuffed quails, poached, halved, masked in white chaudfroid and stood upright against a paper-covered pillar. The hinge is temperature control of the sauce — chaudfroid must be worked at the moment it coats a spoon but has not set, or it will either run off the birds or go on in ridges.

The foundation and supportThe "wooden foundation" is a socle — a shaped block, here papered over, that raises the dish and gives the birds something to lean on. A modern substitute is a round of stiff card or a small cake board with a papered tin or block in the center, two to three inches across and, as the recipe directs, about the same height as the quails.
CornetA paper piping cone, rolled from parchment. The butter beads around the rim are decoration only and can be piped from a small plain tube; keep the butter cold and firm or the beads slump.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan. Any wide, shallow pan that holds eight wrapped quails in one layer and takes a lid will do; the birds must sit level so the stock covers them evenly.
Quails and boningFarmed quail are widely sold, usually 4-5 oz each, and often come semi-boned. If boning from whole birds, work from the back, leave the thigh bones attached as the recipe directs, and reserve the detached legs — they are pushed into each masked half at the end to suggest a whole bird.
The cross-referencesNo. 66 is Ranhofer's fine galantine forcemeat; No. 194 a is the stock the recipe calls for; No. 596 is his white chaudfroid, in the usual manner a white sauce fortified with enough aspic to set firm when cold. Any well-made equivalent of each works, provided the chaudfroid sets solid at refrigerator temperature.
Muslin wrappingEach bird is wrapped and tied so the forcemeat cannot swell the seams open during poaching. Cheesecloth in a double layer is the modern stand-in; retying the cooked birds tighter while still warm is what gives the clean, compressed cut needed for halving.
Poaching timeTwenty to thirty minutes at a bare simmer is correct for stuffed quail of this size — the forcemeat should reach 165F, and the birds are eaten cold, so there is no benefit to pulling them early. Do not let the liquid boil after the first bubbling up, or the forcemeat coarsens and the skin splits.
CoolingRanhofer lets the birds go "partly cold in their stock" on the bench. Cool them in the stock only until handleable, then refrigerate; poultry and forcemeat should not sit for hours at room temperature. They must be thoroughly cold and dry-surfaced before masking or the sauce will slide.
YieldEight quails cut in two give sixteen upright halves — a cold entrée for eight, or a larger buffet piece served with the chopped jelly and truffle cases as garnish.

A Little History

Chaudfroid — literally "hot-cold" — is the nineteenth-century cold kitchen's central trick: something cooked hot, chilled, then coated in a sauce enriched with enough gelatin from aspic or reduced stock that it sets to an opaque, sliceable glaze. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled the Cold Service chapter of The Epicurean (1894) with these pieces because they were the backbone of the buffet and the ball supper, where dishes had to be assembled hours ahead and hold their shape under a warm room and long service. The mounting instructions here — the papered socle, the central pillar, the crimped paper cases of glazed truffle — belong to that world of competitive display rather than to flavor. Names like "à la Baudy" typically honored a patron, a colleague or a house associated with the dish; Ranhofer used dozens of such dedications without explaining them, and the reference in this case is not documented.