Name: To Broil Quail or Woodcock
Ingredients: quail or woodcock; coarse sea salt; black pepper; cream gravy

Why it works: Quail and pepper work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 391 recipes. Both carry sabinene, which smells woody, terpenic. The science ↓

To Broil Quail or Woodcock

Ingredients

quail or woodcock
coarse sea salt
black pepper
cream gravy

Directions

Prepare

Dress the quail or woodcock and split them down the back.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Broil and serve

Place them on a grill with the inside facing down.
Broil slowly at first.
Serve with cream gravy.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together391 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
Quail + creamtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Quail or woodcock: Provides the main protein, which is cooked whole after being split open.
Cream gravy: Adds moisture and richness to the served birds.

“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.