Skip to main content
Main

Fried or Smothered Quail

Fried or smothered quail seasoned with coarse sea salt, coated in flour, and cooked in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried or Smothered Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the quail and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Rub the quail with coarse sea salt.

  3. Coat the quail in flour.

Fry

  1. Heat plenty of butter and lard in a skillet.

  2. Fry the quail slowly, covering with a lid.

  3. Add a little cold water occasionally while frying.

  4. Once browned, place the quail on a platter and garnish with parsley.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Quail + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Main protein; frying it slowly with a lid cooks the meat through while the skin browns.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat and gives the skin a crisp texture.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and contributes browning and a rich, nutty flavour.
Lard
Provides a high-temperature frying fat that helps the coating brown evenly.

The step that matters

Adding cold water while frying. Occasional splashes of cold water create steam under the lid, which helps the quail cook through gently. Too much water, however, stops the skin from browning and crisping, so the quail must be dried well first and the water added sparingly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, flour, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes