Name: Broiled Squab or Quail
Ingredients: 1 squab or quail; melted butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; buttered toast

Why it works: Squab and butter work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Broiled Squab or Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the squab or quail by splitting it down the back.
Press it flat and dip in melted butter.

Cook and serve

Broil over a steady fire until cooked through.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and bits of butter.
Serve on hot buttered toast.

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.

Squab + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together48 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Squab + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together35 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

Squab or quail: Forms the main protein that is cooked through by broiling.
Melted butter: Adds moisture and richness as the bird is dipped and then broiled.
Buttered toast: Serves as a base that soaks up the juices and butter from the bird.

“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.