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Broiled Quail

A roasted quail seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and lemon, served with parsley, toast, or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Singe and wipe the quail clean.

  2. Starting at the neck, split the quail open and remove the insides.

  3. Remove the breastbone and wipe the inside clean.

  4. Sprinkle the quail with coarse sea salt and pepper. Brush with melted butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil for 15 minutes over a brisk fire, turning frequently.

  2. Serve garnished with parsley on toast or with currant jelly.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole after being split open.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the skin brown and stay tender under the broiler.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness to balance the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Broiling over a brisk fire with frequent turning. Quail is small and lean, so it cooks quickly and can dry out or burn. Frequent turning exposes each side evenly to heat, promoting even browning while keeping the meat juicy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, pepper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, pepper, lemon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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