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Quail Stew

A stew of quail cooked with butter, water, and lemon juice, served over toasted or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Quail Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the quails down the back, lengthwise.

  2. Place them in a pan with some butter and cook.

  3. Prepare 2 slices of toasted or fried bread.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lay the cooked quails on the bread.

  2. Add a little water to the pan juices and thicken.

  3. Pour the thickened sauce over the quails.

  4. Squeeze a little lemon juice over 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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Quail + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Provide the main protein, which cooks in butter and is served whole over the bread.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the quails brown in the pan.
Bread
Acts as a base that soaks up the pan juices and sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and pan sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, bread. 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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