The table of old times,
The Book of Recipes

Quail stuffed with olives
served with green sauce

Period: Roman Empire / Category: dish

Marcus Gavius ​​Apicius (around 25 BC – around 37 AD),
The Culinary Art – Book VI: The Poultry Maker

Ingredients

for 6 persons :

  • 6 very fleshy and gutted quails
  • 2 liters of vegetable broth prepared with a bouquet garni (bay leaf, thyme and parsley) and a leek
  • 125 grams of pitted green olives
  • 6 finely chopped pitted dates (I use the Deglet Nour variety, less sweet than Medjool dates, and more suitable for meat and fish dishes)
  • 1 cup chopped herbs: mint, coriander, flat-leaf parsley, chives (in the same proportions)
  • 1 ½ teaspoon ground cumin seeds (I use a coffee grinder, but if you want to make life easier you can use already ground cumin)
  • 1 teaspoon powdered caraway seeds (same as point above)
  • 1 tablespoon of honey (for this recipe I use forest honey, but Apicius does not give details regarding the variety of honey to use)
  • 100 ml of wine vinegar
  • 150 ml dry white wine
  • 3 tablespoons of olive oil
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons of Garum : if like me you do not plan to get into the creation of this ancestral sauce, you can very well use the Cochatura di Alici or the Nuoc-Mâm fish sauce. For purists, Spanish researchers have analyzed leftovers found in clay storage jars sealed in a building in Pompeii and, with a recipe for Garum which would have been written in the 3rd century AD, they recreated what they claim to be the first 2000-year-old fish sauce. It is now marketed in Spain under the name of "Flor de Garum" .

The preparation

1- Wash the quails in boiling water, dry them and remove the remaining feathers (I use a kitchen blowtorch).
2- Stuff the quails with the lightly crushed olives and close the opening using kitchen skewers, crossing the legs.
3- Prepare the sauce:

  • In a saucepan, heat the honey. As soon as it starts to shudder, add the vinegar, the wine, the finely chopped dates, the carvi, the cumin molded the nuoc-mâm sauce and reduce a little.
  • Remove from the heat and add the fine herbs.
  • Mix well and set aside.

4- Cook the quails in the boiling vegetable broth for 20 minutes, covered.

5- Apicius removed the quails from the olives after this cooking phase and served them with the sauce without further cooking. So, if you are a purist of ancient Roman cuisine, this is what you should do. In the next point, I suggest my variation.

6- Remove the quails from the broth and dry them well (keep the quails stuffed and “sewn” with the kitchen skewers).

7- Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and then brown the quails to brown them.

8- Remove the kitchen skewers and serve the quails topped with green sauce.

Annotations

  • Apicius does not mention doses or cooking times. The recipes are truly minimalist, which will give you the opportunity to find the perfect balance for your taste.
  • The original recipe for green sauce includes Indian spikenard in the ingredients. I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find it. If you succeed, I would be grateful if you could share the information with me.