Name: Quails on Toast
Ingredients: 5 quails; Butter; Lemon juice; 1 lemon, quartered; 5 thin slices of pork, about 3 inches square

Why it works: Quail and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Quails on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the quails well and do not remove the legs.
String the quails tightly to raise the breasts.
Place a little butter and lemon juice on each quail.
Insert a quarter of lemon inside each quail.
Wrap each quail with a slice of pork and make two or three cuts in the pork.
String the pork tightly around each quail.
Cook the quails over a good fire until nearly done.
Cut the string and dress the quails nicely on toast.
Serve hot, pouring off excess fat and adding lemon slices around the dish.

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.

Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together308 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together512 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Quail + lemontop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together103 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).