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Broiled Quail

A dish of quail seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and flour, broiled and served on buttered toast with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the quail down the back.

  2. Wipe the quail with a damp towel.

  3. Season the quail with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Rub the quail thickly with soft butter.

  5. Dredge the quail with flour.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the quail for 10 minutes over clear coals, with the inside facing the fire.

  2. Serve the quail on buttered toast and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Quail + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main protein, cooked whole after splitting so it cooks evenly.
Soft butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown during broiling.
Flour
Dusts the surface, helping the skin crisp and brown.
Buttered toast
Soaks up juices and fat, giving the birds a base to rest on.

The step that matters

Broil with the inside facing the fire. Placing the cut side toward the heat cooks the meat quickly and evenly while the skin on the outside is protected, so the birds do not dry out or char before they are cooked through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, pepper, butter, flour. 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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