Salmi of Quail (1868)
Reader ratingsA salmi of quail after Jules Gouffé’s quick household salmi of larks of 1868: quail browned with bacon and mushrooms, dusted with flour and finished in hot white wine with parsley.
- Recipe makes
- 4 servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Heat the wine in a second pan while the birds brown, so it is boiling when the flour has gone in.
Salmi of quail with bacon and mushrooms.
The story behind the recipe
A salmi, in a Paris kitchen of 1868, usually meant game birds finished in a wine sauce, a name broad enough to cover almost anything small with wings, or without them. One morning in November 1870 Henry Labouchere had for his breakfast, he reported to the Daily News, “a salmis of rats — it was excellent — something between frog and rabbit.” He was curious, he added, to see whether the restaurant “would boldly call rat, rat in my bill. His heart failed him — it figures as a salmi of game.”
Two kinds of salmi
Jules Gouffé’s Royal Cookery Book of 1868 has the grand kind for pheasants, partridges and wild duck, roasted first and sauced with Madeira or claret and the rich brown sauce of a professional kitchen. In the household half of the book he gives a much quicker one, for larks. Twelve birds go into a stewpan with fried bacon and sliced mushrooms, then flour and hot white wine, with parsley at the end. “This number of birds,” he notes, “will not much exceed the proportion required for four persons.” In the siege, the word on a bill of fare could stand for whatever the kitchen had, and What Did Paris Eat Under Siege in 1870? traces how far that went, from cats to the zoo’s elephants.
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Making it today
Larks are hard to come by today, so we use farmed quail, the closest small bird a butcher sells. A quail is about three times the weight of a lark, so one bird per person replaces Gouffé’s three. Because they are bigger, the quail cook longer than his eight minutes, and we let them simmer a few minutes in the wine until they are done through. Gouffé’s “half a pottle of mushrooms” was half a market basket of uncertain size; eight ounces is our measure. The rest follows the book: the bacon not blanched, the white wine boiled before it goes in, very little salt because of the bacon.
Labouchere ate his salmi of rats at breakfast. At home it is a forty-minute main course, and the Plum Pudding with Rum (1868) follows it.
Take out the gizzards of 12 larks; singe, and pick them, leaving the legs. This number of birds will not much exceed the proportion required for four persons. ...
Recipe makes: 4 servings
Ingredients
For 4 servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 4 servings.
Birds
- Quail, split in half4
- Streaky bacon, in one piece or thick slices4 oz
- Unsalted butter1 oz
- Button mushrooms, sliced8 oz
- All-purpose flour1 oz
Wine
- Dry white wine15 fl oz
- Black pepper1 pinch
- Salt1 pinch
To finish
- Chopped parsley1/2 fl oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 4 quail, split in half
- 4 oz streaky bacon, in one piece or thick slices
- 1 oz unsalted butter
- 8 oz button mushrooms, sliced
- 1 oz all-purpose flour
- 15 fl oz dry white wine
- 1 pinch black pepper
- 1 pinch salt
- 0.5 fl oz chopped parsley
Equipment
- Wide sauté pan with a lid, about 3 quarts
Small saucepan- Tongs
Wooden spoon
Instant-read thermometer- Warm serving dish
Instructions
Pat the quail dry. Cut the bacon into pieces about 1 inch long and ½ inch thick.
Melt the butter in the sauté pan over medium heat and fry the bacon until it is well colored, about 5 minutes.
Lift out the bacon with a slotted spoon. Brown the quail in two batches so they don’t steam: put in half, skin side down, and cook for about 5 minutes, turning once, then lift them out and brown the rest. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 3 minutes, stirring, then return the bacon and all the quail to the pan.
Meanwhile, bring the white wine to a boil in the small saucepan with the pepper and the salt.
Sprinkle the flour over the birds and toss everything for 1 minute to mix.
Pour in the boiling wine, stirring as you go so the flour doesn’t lump. Cover and simmer gently for about 5 minutes, until the thickest part of a thigh reads 165°F (74°C).
Add the parsley, boil for 1 minute, and serve on the warm dish with the sauce.
Nutrition
430calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 4 servings
- Servings
- 4
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, counting part of the bacon fat and the wine as cooked off.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Allow one quail per person. For more than four, brown the birds in more batches, or use two pans, so they brown rather than steam.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
Farmed quail weigh about 4½ oz each. Half a fluid ounce of chopped parsley is about a tablespoon. Ask the butcher to split the quail, or cut each one through the backbone and breastbone with kitchen shears. A dry French white such as a Muscadet or a white Burgundy suits the sauce. Taste before adding any more salt; the bacon seasons it. Contains milk and wheat.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Jules Gouffé, The Royal Cookery Book, trans. Alphonse Gouffé (London: Sampson Low, 1868), Salmi of Larks
Recipe details
- Course
- Main course
- Dish family
- Meat & Poultry
- Region
- French
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1860s
- Main ingredient
- Poultry & game birdsWine & spirits
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Dinner party