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To Broil Quail in the Oven
Dip the birds in melted butter, then place them as close together as possible on a roasting pan and put them in a very hot oven for fifteen minutes, or until nicely browned all over. Small birds of any kind may be broiled in the same manner as a quail, and served on thin slices of either dry or buttered toast.
TO BROIL A CHICKEN IN THE OVEN.
Split the chicken down the back, lay it inside down upon a meat-board and press the joints and breast-bone close to the board with a rolling pin, crushing them down until the chicken is quite flat, then wipe off all moisture with a dry towel, and lay the flattened chicken inside down upon a smoking hot roasting pan. Put a weight upon it to keep it pressed close to the pan until well seared and lightly browned. After the searing and browning have been accomplished remove the weight and put the chicken, without taking it from the pan, into a very hot oven. Place it on the upper grate so the greatest heat may be from above. Close the oven door and leave the chicken undisturbed for twenty minutes. At the end of that time it will be evenly browned on the outside, and if young and not large, will be perfectly cooked all through. If full grown or very large it will have to be cooked from forty to sixty minutes. When cooked, lay upon a platter, season with salt, pepper, and melted butter, and serve.
TO BROIL A RABBIT IN THE OVEN.
Spread the prepared rabbit open, flatten with a rollingpin or mallet, lay inside down in a roasting pan, and broil in a hot oven like a chicken. When the rabbit is thoroughly cooked pour into the roasting pan two or three tablespoonfuls of hot water, add two of melted butter and one of minced parsley, let simmer a few minutes, season to taste with pepper and salt, pour over the rabbit, and serve. TO BROIL A SQUIRREL IN THE OVEN.
A squirrel may be prepared, cooked, and served in the same manner as a rabbit. The flavor of parsley is so admirably adapted to that of a rabbit or squirrel, that it can always be appropriately used with either.
Four related instructions for cooking small game and poultry under fierce dry heat, which in this period was called broiling whether or not a gridiron was involved. The method still works; the timings assume birds smaller and cooks braver than most of ours.
- The hinge: a preheated pan"Smoking hot roasting pan" is the whole technique. Put the empty heavy pan in the oven while it comes to temperature, and add the bird only when the fat hisses on contact. A cold pan steams the skin and none of the searing described here will happen.
- "Very hot" and "hot" ovenThe book gives no numbers. In cookery of this vintage a "very hot" oven is usually read as somewhere around 450-500F and a plain "hot" oven as something below that, but the terms were never standardised. These were coal- and wood-range instructions, so treat them as the top of your range's useful band rather than an exact figure.
- Flattening the chickenSplitting down the back and crushing the breastbone flat is what is now called spatchcocking. A rolling pin works, but the joints yield more willingly to the heel of the hand or a mallet, and kitchen shears through the backbone save the rolling pin.
- Chicken donenessTwenty minutes will cook a genuinely small bird of two pounds or so. A modern 3.5-4 lb supermarket chicken needs 40-50 minutes at this heat, and the only reliable test is 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone.
- Quail: fifteen minutes is for wild birdsQuail: fifteen minutes suits very small birds -- Farmed quail sold today run 4-6 oz and dry out fast; 12-14 minutes at a high heat is usually enough, and the breast is often served faintly pink at about 155F while the legs finish. Wild-shot quail is generally not offered for sale in the United States and in most cases has to come from a hunter.
- Rabbit and squirrelOnly young animals suit this dry, fast method; anything older wants braising and will be leathery here. Cook rabbit through, to about 160F, rather than treating it like a bird.
- The pan sauceThe two or three tablespoons of hot water are deglazing liquid for the fond left in the roasting pan; scrape while it simmers. Note that the recipe adds the butter and parsley before the few minutes' simmering.
- Yield and servingTwo quail per person on toast; one flattened chicken serves two to three; a rabbit or squirrel serves two. The toast is not decoration, it catches the juices, and dry toast holds up better than buttered under a bird already dipped in butter.
Broiling once meant cooking on a gridiron over live coals, and the survival of the word in these oven directions marks a moment of transition: the closed cast-iron range had largely replaced the open hearth, so cooks kept the old vocabulary and moved the food inside, using a preheated pan and the upper grate to imitate radiant fire from above. Quail, rabbit and squirrel were still ordinary market and household meat when this book was written; game birds were sold openly by dealers, and the decline of that trade is generally traced to the Lacey Act of 1900, after which quail on toast became a hunter's dish or a farmed one. Squirrel's presence alongside chicken, with no more comment than a note about parsley, is a reminder that the line between game and groceries sat in a different place than it does now.