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Quails Roasted

Roasted quails served on toast with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Quails Roasted

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Draw the quails and wipe them inside and out with a cloth and cold water.

  2. Truss the quails, letting the legs stand up, and tie a thin slice of salt pork or bacon around each one.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes, basting frequently with butter and a little hot water.

  2. Serve the quails on slices of toast, seasoned with salt, pepper, and the melted butter from the pan.

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. Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Provide the main meat, which cooks quickly in a hot oven to stay tender.
Salt pork or bacon
Wrapped around the birds, it bastes them with fat and adds savoury flavour as it renders.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting with it helps the surface brown and stay moist.
Toast
Soaks up the pan juices and butter, giving the quail a base to rest on.

The step that matters

Basting frequently in the hot oven. Quail is lean and cooks fast, so regular basting with butter and water keeps the meat moist and promotes even browning before it dries out.

“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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