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
  • Garum : if like me you are not planning to start creating this ancestral sauce, you can very well use colatura di alici or Nuoc-Mâm fish sauce. For purists, Spanish researchers analyzed remains found in sealed clay storage jars in a building in Pompeii and, with a recipe for garum believed to have been written in the 3rd century AD, they recreated this which they claim to be the first 2000 year old fish sauce. It is now marketed in Spain under the name “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 simmer, add the vinegar, wine, finely chopped dates, caraway and ground cumin 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.