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Quail on Toast

A dish of roasted quail served on buttered toast with a sauce.

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

Quail on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Split the quails down the back and clean them thoroughly.

  2. Wipe them dry, then season with salt and pepper and dredge with flour.

  3. Pound down the breast bones so they lie flat.

Roast and fry

  1. Place the quails in a buttered pan with a little hot water.

  2. Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nearly done.

  3. Heat butter or goose oil in a skillet.

  4. Fry each piece until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Prepare buttered toast on a platter and place a quail on each piece.

  2. Thicken the sauce in the pan with a little flour.

  3. Pour the sauce over the quails.

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

Quails
Provide the main meat, whose lean breast cooks quickly and dries out easily.
Butter or goose oil
Conducts heat in the skillet and adds fat for richer flavour and golden browning.
Flour
Coats the birds to promote browning and later thickens the pan sauce.
Toast
Forms a base that soaks up the juices and sauce beneath the quail.

The step that matters

Roasting until nearly done. Stopping the roast short of fully cooked matters because the quail is fried afterward, and further heat can dry out the lean meat.

“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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