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Broiled Quail

Broiled quail served on bread with butter, lemon slices, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Singe the quail, then wipe it.

  2. Make a cut through the backbone from the neck to the tail and lay the bird open.

  3. Remove the insides and wipe the quail thoroughly.

  4. Sprinkle the quail with coarse sea salt and brush it with olive oil.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the quail over a clear fire for 10 to 12 minutes, turning it to brown evenly.

  2. Spread Maitre d'Hotel Butter on canapes of bread and brown the bread in the oven.

  3. Serve the quail on the bread and garnish with lemon slices and watercress.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
The main protein, cooked whole and opened so it cooks evenly under direct heat.
Olive oil
Coats the skin so it browns evenly and does not dry out under the broiler.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the bread and enriches the dish.
Canapes of bread
Acts as a crisp base that soaks up butter and juices under the bird.

The step that matters

Turning the quail to brown evenly. Under a broiler the side facing the heat browns quickly while the other side lags. Turning the bird during broiling spreads the heat, so the skin browns evenly without the thin parts scorching.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, olive, bread, butter, watercress):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, olive, bread, butter, watercress. 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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