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Stuffed Quails

A dish of quails stuffed with mushrooms, truffles, bread crumbs, and butter, baked and served with a currant wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quails

  1. Remove the bones from the quails as you would for a boned turkey.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with mushrooms, truffles, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt, making it moist.

  3. Stuff the quails tightly and tie them up, leaving the feet on.

  4. Tie a piece of larding pork to each bird's breast to maintain shape.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the quails in a baking pan, dust with flour, and baste them.

  2. For the sauce, combine currant jelly, wine, and the gravy from the birds.

  3. Serve the quails on buttered toast and garnish with cresses.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + porktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
The main protein, boned and stuffed so the birds keep a neat, rounded shape while cooking.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the stuffing, keeping it tender as it cooks.
Truffles
Contribute a concentrated, aromatic earthy flavour to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices, giving the stuffing body and a moist texture.
Larding pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean quail meat and helps it stay moist during baking.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich gravy and wine sauce.

The step that matters

Stuff the quails tightly and tie them up. Tight stuffing and secure tying keep the boned birds in shape, so the stuffing stays inside and the quails cook evenly instead of spreading or drying out.

“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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