I bought some quail eggs the other day from a well known supermarket. I have always wanted to model them at twelfth scale as part of
MedievalMorsels' range. So even better, to model them, then eat them!
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| Real quail eggs |
The European Quail is Europe’s smallest game bird. MedievalMorsels already models this miniscule
game bird at one twelfth scale but its tiny, mottled eggs would prove a new challenge! In real life the eggs ranged between about one and a quarter inches to one and a half inches long. Depending on their girth, some were more "classically" pointed than others. Here are the real life -sized thing but the "nest" is not real, it's just some dried grasses I had handy to spread on the lawn!
I armed myself with a ruler with twelfths on it (a rare occurrence even on an "old" school ruler, take a look). It was a question of carefully copying the quail egg background colour, a greenish tinged but very pale ochre easily achieved because coloured Fimo clays are so readily mixable. Then it was decision time for the speckles and splodges, stipple brown splodges of paint or use brown Fimo clay? I am not handy with a paint brush, especially on a target only a little over a twelfth of an inch large, so it was a question of applying chips of brown Fimo clay!
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| Quail eggs for a 12th scale period dolls house, Medieval/Tudor luxury food |
The end result seen here was very pleasing, one of my favourite minis ever that's for sure!
And then to eat a dozen eggs between two of us, soft boiled (one minute boiling, half a minute standing) and halved on salad tossed with cress, and toast croutons with fried onion sprinkles. Plus ground black pepper of course!
Despite its small size, the
European Quail is a migratory bird capable of flying phenomenal
distances. I suspect it was the quail's well observed migration routes
that made it an attractive and easy target for early capture for the Dark and Middle Ages
tables. It could be easily netted at commonly used feeding points en route, or where
it fell exhausted to the ground after literally making landfall after a
long sea passage. Their migration is actually mentioned in the Bible, in
Exodus: "And it came to pass at even(ing), the quails came up and
covered the camp."
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| 12th scale dollshouse food, quails |
Quails first arrived on the medieval menu in England via
France - they were netted and shipped live to British shores in little
cages complete, it is recorded, with grain and water to sustain them on
the journey. I imagine, given all this effort, they must have commanded a
very high price and be bound for some of the richest households in the
kingdom.
Quails were therefore a rare and seasonal treat, reserved for
aristocratic dining. However they are tasty and came to be domesticated
in England by the 14th century.
So much smaller
than its cousins, quails were later raised and trapped on manor estates in the English countryside - alongside
partridge, and pheasant. The
collective noun for many quail is a "bevy" and this term can be used
for beauties, ladies and maidens, as well as larks and doves. How
lovely!
If you want to look at a more sinister side of Quails look at my blog-post from
12th July 2014 "Hemlock, Quails and
MedievalMorsels".
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