Skip to main content
Main

Roast Quails

Roast quails stuffed with raw oysters, wrapped in bacon, served on buttered toast with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Roast Quails

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Draw and wipe the quails inside and out with a soft, damp cloth.

  2. Place a whole raw oyster in the body of each quail.

  3. Truss the quails as you would a chicken.

  4. Bind a thin slice of bacon over the breast of each quail.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the quails on a roasting rack with a little hot water underneath.

  2. Cook covered in a lively oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes, basting three times with a mixture of butter and water.

  3. Wash the quails with butter, pepper, and salt before serving.

  4. Serve the quails on squares of buttered toast, moistened with gravy from the roaster.

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. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Quail + oystertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 in a hot oven while staying moist under the bacon.
Raw oysters
Placed inside the birds, they release moisture and savoury flavour into the meat as it roasts.
Fat bacon
Its melting fat bastes the breast meat, keeping it moist and adding savoury flavour and browning.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes browning on the skin, and is used in the basting mixture.
Buttered toast
Serves as a base that soaks up the roasting gravy and carries the quail.

The step that matters

Basting the quails during roasting. Quail is very lean and cooks quickly, so it can dry out easily. Regular basting with butter and water keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes