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Quails Broiled with Bacon

A dish of quails broiled with bacon, served over toast with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Quails Broiled with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Singe, draw, and wipe the quails well.

  2. Split them through the back without separating the parts and break the two leg bones.

  3. Season with a pinch of coarse sea salt, half a pinch of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of sweet oil, mixing well.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the quails on moderate heat for 6 minutes on each side.

  2. Arrange the toast on a hot dish, lay the quails on top, and pour ½ cup of maitre d'hotel butter over them.

  3. Decorate with the 6 slices of broiled bacon and serve.

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. Pepper + buttertop 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

Quails
The main protein; splitting and broiling cook the meat through while keeping it tender.
Sweet oil
Adds moisture and helps the seasoning cling and the skin brown under the heat.
Bacon
Renders fat as it broils, adding savory flavour and crispness as a garnish.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds richness and moisture, soaking into the toast and coating the quail.
Toast
Soaks up the butter and juices, giving the quail a base to rest on.

The step that matters

Broiling the quails for 6 minutes per side. Quail is small and lean, so it dries out quickly under heat. Moderate heat and close attention help the meat cook through while staying juicy.

“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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