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Compote of Quails

A savory compote of boiled quails simmered with butter, herbs, mushrooms, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Compote of Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quails

  1. Truss the quails as you would chickens for boiling.

  2. Place them in a large stewpan with butter, green onions, parsley, marjoram, cloves, and mace.

  3. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  4. Add flour and mix well in the stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in enough broth to cover the birds and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat.

  3. Add mushroom parings and Madeira wine.

  4. Check the quails for tenderness.

  5. Transfer them to a clean stewpan.

  6. If the sauce is too thin, reduce it further.

  7. Skim off excess grease.

  8. Strain the sauce over the quails.

Finish and serve

  1. Add button mushrooms, quenelles, and truffles and bring to a boil.

  2. Serve the quails with sauce poured over them, garnished with fried bread or small pudding shapes.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 becomes tender as it simmers gently in the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the aromatics, building flavour at the start of cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce that clings to the birds.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth, rounding out the broth into a richer sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished sauce.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the quails gently until tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can break up the birds, so keep the broth at a gentle simmer and check tenderness before moving on.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, onion, parsley, marjoram, clove, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, onion, parsley, marjoram, clove, flour. 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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