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Quails, Roasted

Roasted quails wrapped in bacon and vine leaves, served with fried bread and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Quails, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck, draw, and truss the quails.

  2. Cut the bacon into thin slices and cover the breasts of the birds.

  3. Tie the vine leaves over the bacon.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the quails for 12 to 15 minutes before a very brisk fire.

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the quails.

  3. Baste well with butter.

  4. Serve the fried bread under the birds.

  5. Take the fat off the dripping and pour it over the bread.

  6. Serve sliced lemon separately or around the dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Keeps the lean breast meat moist and adds savory fat flavour as it renders.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes browning on the skin when basted over the birds.
Quails
Provide the main meat, which cooks quickly over high heat.

The step that matters

Roast the quails for 12 to 15 minutes before a very brisk fire. Quail is small and lean, so high heat for a short time cooks it through and crisps the skin. Overcooking dries the meat quickly, which is why timing matters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

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