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Quails with Force-meat

A dish of quails stuffed with a forcemeat mixture of bacon, liver, eschalot, herbs, and spices, baked with buttered paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Quails with Force-meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Bone the quails, leaving the leg bones intact.

  2. Fry the diced bacon for a few minutes.

  3. Add the calf’s liver, eschalot, herbs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Fry gently, stirring often.

  4. Once cooked, remove the herbs and pound the mixture in a mortar until smooth.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool, then fill a piping bag with it.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the quails with the force-meat and truss them.

  2. Cut three strips of paper, butter them, and bind them around the quails.

  3. Grease a baking dish and place the quails inside.

  4. Sprinkle a little sherry on top and cover with buttered paper.

  5. Cook in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the papers and brush three fire-proof china cases with salad oil.

  2. Place a layer of the pounded force-meat in the bottom of each case.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Quail + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Form the main body of the dish, cooked whole around the stuffing.
Calf’s liver
Provides the rich, smooth body of the force-meat filling.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the force-meat, keeping it moist.

The step that matters

Pounding the force-meat until smooth. Cooking the liver mixture and then pounding it until smooth breaks down its fibres, giving a fine, even texture that pipes and spreads cleanly. Letting it cool before piping keeps it firm enough to hold its shape inside the quails.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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