Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Quail

A dish of quail grilled with butter, seasoned with coarse sea salt, served on buttered toast and garnished with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare

  1. Dress the quail carefully.

  2. Soak them in salt water for a short time.

  3. Split the quail down the back.

  4. Dry them with a cloth.

Broil the quail

  1. Rub the quail with butter.

  2. Place them on a grill over a clear fire.

  3. Turn the quail frequently.

  4. Dip them in melted butter.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Prepare a slice of buttered toast for each bird.

  2. Place a quail, breast upward, on each slice.

  3. Garnish with currant jelly.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
The main protein, split so it cooks flat and evenly over the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown as it cooks.
Thin toast
Serves as a base that soaks up the juices from the cooked birds.

The step that matters

Turn the quail frequently.. Over a hot, clear fire the butter-coated skin can scorch quickly. Frequent turning lets the heat reach the meat evenly, so it browns without burning before it 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