Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Quail

A quail roasted over a clear fire, finished with melted butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Split each quail down the back.

  2. Place the quail on the broiler over a clear fire.

  3. Turn the quail often while cooking.

  4. After fifteen minutes, remove the quail and pour melted butter over them.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  6. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Is the main protein, cooked through by direct heat while turned for even cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour over the surface of the quail.

The step that matters

Turning the quail often while broiling. Direct heat from above or below browns the exposed side quickly while the rest cooks slowly. Frequent turning spreads heat evenly so the surface does not scorch before the meat is cooked through.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes