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Quail Cases

Baked quails served with a brown sauce flavored with truffles and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and truffle work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Quail Cases

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 the quail

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Oil paper cases and place the quails inside.

  3. Add a few drops of salad oil on each quail.

  4. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the quail bones, glaze, and brown sauce.

  2. Boil to extract flavor from the bones, then strain.

  3. Add truffles and sherry to the strained sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain excess grease from the quails and pour about 1 tablespoon of sauce over each before serving.

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 + truffletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Truffle + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Quail + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + truffletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  5. Quail + sherrytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Form the main protein of the dish, cooked gently in paper cases to stay moist.
Brown sauce
Provides the body and savory richness that coats the quail.
Glaze
Adds concentrated meaty depth and gloss to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished sauce.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the grease from the quails before saucing. Quail renders fat as it bakes, and excess grease left on the birds would float on and dull the sauce. Draining first keeps the sauce clean-tasting and lets it cling to the 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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