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Quails

Roasted quails prepared by cleaning, seasoning with flour and butter, and baking at 200°C.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quails

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quail

  1. Remove the entrails from the quails, keeping the heart and liver.

  2. Make a small opening in the vent to draw out the entrails carefully.

  3. Wash the quails and wipe them dry.

  4. Tie the legs down to the rump with strong thread, keeping the feet up.

Roast

  1. Dredge the quails with a little flour.

  2. Baste them with butter.

  3. Roast the quails in a 200°C oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Quail + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quail
The main protein, which cooks quickly and turns dry if overcooked.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and promotes browning on the skin.
Flour
A light dusting that helps the skin brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Roast the quails for 15 to 20 minutes. Quail are small and lean, so they cook fast. Leaving them in the oven too long dries out the meat, so check doneness early.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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