Skip to main content
Main

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
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Quail and liver work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 57 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanol, which smells resin, flower. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Quail + livertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Quail + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together512 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together24,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Sageabout as good a flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Mutton BrothIllustrationMutton Broth292 recipesIllustration of Yorkshire PuddingIllustrationYorkshire Pudding264 recipes