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Baking

Baked Quail

Baked quail seasoned with flour, salt, pepper, and bacon, cooked in a pan with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and flour work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Quail

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. Split the quail through the back and lay them in a dripping pan.

  2. Dredge the quail with flour and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Place a small slice of breakfast bacon on each bird.

Bake

  1. Add a little water to the pan and baste the quail often.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for at least one hour, or until thoroughly cooked.

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main meat of the dish, cooking through in the oven.
Flour
Dredging coats the skin, helping it brown and crisp during baking.
Breakfast bacon
Lies on each bird, adding fat that bastes the meat and flavors it as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baste the quail often. Quail is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Basting with the pan liquid and fat keeps the surface moist and helps it 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.

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