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Bboiled Quails

A dish of quails seasoned, coated in flour, broiled, served on toasted buttered bread with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Bboiled Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quails

  1. Singe and draw the quails.

  2. Split them lengthwise down the back.

  3. Wipe them with a damp cloth.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Rub with warmed butter.

  6. Dredge with flour.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the quails on a grill over a hot fire.

  2. Broil for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the crusts from the bread.

  4. Toast the slices.

  5. Butter the slices.

  6. Lay them on a hot dish.

  7. Place a cooked quail on each slice of bread.

  8. Garnish with parsley.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 cooks through over the fire while staying tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the quail skin brown and stay juicy.
Flour
Dredging creates a light coating that helps the surface brown and crisp.
Bread
Serves as a toasted base that soaks up juices from the quail.

The step that matters

Broil for 10 minutes. Quail is small and lean, so overcooking dries the meat quickly. Watch the heat closely over the hot fire and keep the birds moving or turning so they cook evenly without burning the flour coating.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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