Why it works: Quail and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
To Broil Quail
Ingredients
Directions
Pick the quail without scalding and singe off any fine hair.
Split the quail down the back and flatten the breast bone.
Heat a griddle iron over hot coals.
Tie a lump of butter and lard in a cloth and baste the quail often while broiling.
Place the quail breast side down on the griddle and turn over once or twice to cook evenly.
Season with pepper and pour drawn butter over the quail.
Serve on toast.
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.
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Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together512 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together391 recipes
Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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