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Fried Quails

Fried quails served on toasted bread with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the quails

  1. Fry the cleaned quails in 2 tablespoons of butter until nicely browned. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In an earthenware or porcelain dish, melt the remaining butter over low heat and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Slowly add the water and wine, stirring continuously. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the fried quails to the sauce and simmer for 15 minutes.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices until golden brown.

  2. Serve the quails on the toasted bread, pouring the gravy over the top. Serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. White wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

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

Quails
Provide the main meat, which browns in butter and becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the quails and enriches the flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the butter and wine liquid into a smooth gravy when stirred in.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, deepening its flavour as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the quails. Browning the quails in butter before simmering builds caramelised, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale quails give a flatter-tasting gravy.

“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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