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Broiled Quails

A dish of quails cooked with sweet oil, salt, pepper, laurel, bacon or ham, finished with breadcrumbs and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and laurel are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,666 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Broiled Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the quails down the back.

  2. Flatten the quails.

  3. Place them in a pan with sweet oil, salt, pepper, and laurel leaves.

  4. Cover with thin slices of bacon or ham.

Cook

  1. Stew slowly over hot coals.

  2. When nearly done, remove them.

  3. Sprinkle with grated breadcrumbs.

  4. Broil on a grill.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add a little warm water to the pan.

  2. Scrape down any bits stuck to the sides.

  3. Skim it and bring to a boil.

  4. Pour the gravy into the serving dish with the quails.

  5. Arrange the bacon around it.

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. Pepper + laureltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Quail + hamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. Laurel + hamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together609 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook slowly.
Sweet oil
Carries heat evenly and helps the quail skin brown and stay moist.
Bacon or ham
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the quail as it cooks.
Grated breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust under the broiler.
Laurel leaves
Add a subtle herbal aroma to the quail and the pan juices.

The step that matters

Stew slowly over hot coals. Gentle, steady heat cooks the quail through and keeps the meat tender. Fierce heat would dry the lean meat and burn the fat before the inside is done.

“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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