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Broiled Quails

Broiled quails served on buttered toast with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Broiled Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and broil

  1. Split the quails at the back.

  2. Broil the quails over a hot fire, basting often with butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, add more butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Place the quails in the oven for a moment to soak in the butter.

  3. Serve on thin slices of buttered toast with a little currant jelly on top.

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Main protein; broiling cooks the meat while basting keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and promotes browning during broiling.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Broil the quails over a hot fire, basting often with butter. Quail is small and lean, so it dries out quickly over intense heat. Frequent basting with butter adds moisture and fat, helping the meat stay juicy while the surface browns.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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