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Quails Parboiled and Baked

Quails wrapped in bacon, parboiled then baked, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Quails Parboiled and Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie a thin slice of bacon over the breast of each quail.

  2. Place the quails in a baking dish with a little boiling water.

Steam

  1. Cover the dish tightly and steam the quails on the stove for 10 to 15 minutes.

Brown and serve

  1. Remove the cover and bacon, then place the quails in the oven.

  2. Baste the quails often with butter and brown them.

  3. Serve 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

Quails
Provide the lean meat that is cooked gently in steam and then browned.
Thin slices of bacon
Lay fat over the breast, adding moisture and savory flavor as it renders.
Butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the surface and promotes golden browning in the oven.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruit note that balances the rich, savory meat.

The step that matters

Steam covered for only 10 to 15 minutes before moving to the oven. Covered steaming cooks the lean breast gently and keeps it moist. Too long in steam leaves the meat soggy and overcooked, while the dry oven heat and butter basting are what produce browning.

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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