Name: Braised Quail
Ingredients: fat quails; heart and liver of quails; thin slices of fat salt pork; coarse sea salt; black pepper; cayenne pepper; hot stock or boiling water; butter; currant jelly

Why it works: Quail and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Braised Quail

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Dress and clean the quails, replacing the heart and liver in each.
Truss the quails into shape and wrap each in a slice of fat salt pork.
Place the quails in a Dutch oven or patent roaster, seasoning with salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Add enough hot stock or boiling water to cover the quails.
Cover closely and cook in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for ten minutes after they start cooking.
Remove the quails and pork, wipe the birds, and spread them with butter.
Finish roasting the quails in the oven, basting with melted butter mixed with hot water.
Reserve the cooking stock to prepare sauce and serve with currant jelly sauce or cold 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.

Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together308 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together512 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, liver, pork, pepper, butter):

Lemonfits better
Grapefits better
Applefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, liver, pork, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.