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Quails, White
Pick six nice, tender, fat quails, singe, draw, neatly wipe, split through back without separating, crack main bones, lightly flatten with cleaver and lay on a dish. Place in a mortar fifteen shelled, peeled and roasted almonds, the clear meat of six very sound walnuts, a very small, sound, peeled and finely chopped shallot, and pound all well together until a fine pulp. Add a half ounce fresh butter, light teaspoon each French mustard and salt, two saltspoons paprika, a saltspoon curry powder, strained juice of quarter of a sound lemon, and briskly pound again for a minute and a half. Take up pulp, carefully rub quails evenly all over with it, then infuse for thirty minutes, being careful to rub frequently meanwhile. Peel and carefully clean twelve good-sized, sound, fresh mushrooms and thoroughly drain. Mix on plate a light teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, a tablespoon each oil and sherry, repeatedly turn mushrooms in seasoning, then neatly arrange one beside another in a baking dish. Place quails on top of mushrooms cut side downward, spread all butter in dish over birds and set in oven for twenty minutes, being careful to baste frequently with their own gravy once in a while. Broil six exceedingly thin slices raw lean ham for one and a half minutes on each side, remove from oven, dress ham over and send to table in same dish.
A spatchcocked quail dish built on a nut-and-spice paste, roasted over mushrooms. It is quick cooking, and the two things that matter most are the marinating time and not overshooting it in the oven.
- The hinge: do not overcookQuail are small and very lean, and twenty minutes is the outer limit rather than a target. Breast meat at 160F is already firm; pull the birds when the thickest part of the thigh reads about 165F, which on 4-5 oz birds can happen in 12-15 minutes.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Twenty minutes for split quail implies a hot oven; something in the 400-425F range is a reasonable reading, and the higher end helps the mushrooms underneath release and reduce their liquid rather than stew.
- Saltspoons and light teaspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons paprika is 1/2 tsp and three saltspoons pepper is 3/4 tsp. "Light" before a measure means scant, not heaped.
- The butter is ambiguousHalf an ounce (one tablespoon) goes into the paste, but the later instruction to "spread all butter in dish over birds" refers to butter never specified. Something on the order of two ounces dotted over six birds suits the amount of basting the recipe expects.
- Sourcing the birdsFarmed quail, usually 4-6 oz dressed and sold ready-drawn, are what is available now; the singeing and drawing described here belonged to birds bought whole and feathered. Semi-boneless quail also work, though they need less time still.
- The pasteA mortar gives the best texture, but a small food processor does the job in seconds. Pulse rather than run it, or the almonds and walnuts turn to oily butter instead of the coarse pulp that clings to the skin.
- MushroomsPeeling mushrooms was standard when field and market mushrooms came in with grit and tough skins. Cultivated white or cremini need only wiping and stemming.
- The ham"Broil" here means the top element or a hot grill, and ninety seconds a side on paper-thin raw ham is enough to crisp it. Prosciutto or an unsmoked country ham sliced very thin is the closest match; anything thicker will still be leathery when the quail are ready.
- YieldSix birds, six ham slices, twelve mushrooms: one quail per person as a course, two per person as a main.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) reflects a restaurant world in which small game birds were everyday market goods rather than specialty items. Wild bobwhite quail and other songbirds were sold commercially in American cities well into the early twentieth century; federal measures such as the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 reshaped the trade in wild birds, though in the case of quail, which are not migratory, the market trade was ended largely through state game laws, and the quail sold today are farmed. The nut paste here, almonds and walnuts pounded with shallot and lemon into a coating, belongs to an older European tradition of thickening and enriching with ground nuts rather than flour, a technique that reaches back to medieval cookery and survives in dishes like Spanish picada and Circassian chicken. Filippini's habit of appending a qualifier to a dish name, as in "Quails, White," follows what is ordinarily an alphabetical-indexing convention in cookbooks.