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Broiled Quail

A dish of quail roasted over a clear fire, served on toasted bread with butter and currant jelly.

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 ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Dress the quail carefully.

  2. Soak the quail in saltwater for a short time.

  3. Split the quail down the back.

  4. Dry the quail with a cloth.

  5. Rub the quail with butter.

Grill

  1. Place the quail on a grill over a clear fire.

  2. Turn the quail often.

  3. Dip the quail in melted butter.

  4. Season the quail with coarse sea salt.

Serve on toast

  1. Prepare a slice of thin toast. Butter the toast.

  2. Place the toast on a hot dish.

  3. Lay a quail breast side up on each piece of toast.

  4. Garnish with currant jelly.

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. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Quail + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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; splitting it flattens it so it cooks evenly over the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown as it cooks over the fire.
Thin toast
Acts as a crisp, absorbent base that soaks up the cooking juices and butter.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness that contrasts with the savoury, rich quail.

The step that matters

Turn the quail often. Frequent turning over a clear fire spreads heat evenly and keeps the thin, split birds from scorching on one side before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter. 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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