Home › The World's Kitchen › Quails, Junipers
Quails, Junipers
Pick, cut heads and feet off, draw and neatly wipe six fat quails. Crush a good tablespoon of very sound, well-dried juniper berries, place in bowl with a half teaspoon fresh butter, thoroughly mix, then equally divide half the butter in interiors of the six quails. Truss well, season all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, place on a roasting tin, arrange a very thin slice larding pork over each bird, then set in oven for twenty-five minutes, basting once in a while, remove, take out lard and untruss. Place them in a cocotte dish, set on the fire, when thoroughly hot divide balance of butter over, and as the butter swells, immediately send to table in cocottiere.
A very short French-style roast: whole quail scented from the inside with crushed juniper, barded with pork fat, and finished in butter at the table. Almost everything here hinges on not overcooking birds that weigh a few ounces each.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none, which was normal when ranges had no dials. Quail want a hot oven, 425-450F, so the skin colours before the breast dries. Twenty-five minutes is the outer limit even at that heat; farmed quail today are often smaller than the "fat quails" assumed here and are done in 15-18 minutes.
- The butter quantity is offThe butter quantity does not work as printed: "a half teaspoon fresh butter" cannot be divided among six cavities and then again over the finished dish. Some larger amount is evidently meant, but the intended figure is guesswork; a few tablespoons, half worked with the juniper and half melted over at the end, is a working assumption rather than a restoration of the original.
- JuniperUse dried berries, crushed but not powdered, about a tablespoon for six birds. Old, brittle berries have lost their resin and taste of nothing; they should smell sharply of pine when crushed. Buy from a spice merchant rather than a decorative jar.
- Larding porkThis is barding, not larding: a thin sheet of fresh pork fatback laid over the breast, one slice per bird. Unsmoked salt pork sliced paper-thin works; thin-cut pancetta or lardo also does the job. Streaky bacon will read as smoke and bury the juniper.
- Trussing and cleaningQuail now arrive plucked and drawn, so the first sentence is done for you. Still tie the legs and tuck the wings, or the small joints splay and scorch. Untruss before the final butter step as directed.
- Cocotte and cocottiereA cocotte is a small lidded cast-iron or earthenware pot used on the stovetop; cocottiere here appears to mean the holder or serving dish it goes to table in, though the term is not a standard one. Any small heavy pan or individual cast-iron dish serves. "As the butter swells" most likely means at the point it foams -- send it out immediately, before it browns.
- DonenessQuail are usually served with the breast only just cooked and faintly rosy at the thigh bone; 155-160F at the thickest point is on the well-done side of that, so judge by eye as well. Any rest off the heat before the butter finish is an addition, not part of the original method.
- YieldSix quail is three servings as a main course with bread and a green salad, or six as a first course. Provide fingers and a bowl for bones; there is no polite way to eat these with cutlery alone.
Juniper and game birds are an old European pairing, and the logic is straightforward: the berry is the resinous cone of Juniperus communis, and its turpentine edge cuts the muskiness of anything that has eaten wild. The same instinct puts juniper in a marinade for venison, in choucroute, and famously into gin, whose name descends through Dutch genever from the Latin juniperus. This recipe's frame is French restaurant cooking of the belle epoque -- barded birds, a brief fierce roast, a foaming butter finish sent out in the pot it was heated in -- and its presence in a book called The International Cook Book reflects the period's assumption that the international register of fine cooking simply was French. In America the dish would then have been made with wild-shot birds, most likely bobwhite, in season; quail is now farmed and sold year round, which is why the modern version is reliably tender and rather less gamy than the juniper was originally there to tame.