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Cailles a LA Lucullus

Quail stuffed with bacon, liver, truffle mixture, baked and served with a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 13,144 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The recipe

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.

Make the stuffing

  1. Cut the bacon and cook it in a sauté pan for a few minutes.

  2. Add the livers, shallot, peppercorns, cloves, and bouquet garni; cook carefully.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar and strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Add the chopped truffles to the mixture.

Stuff and bake the quail

  1. Stuff each quail with the mixture and place in buttered or oiled paper cases.

  2. Drizzle a few drops of salad oil on each quail and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 10 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, put the quail bones in a saucepan with the glaze and brown sauce; boil to extract flavor.

  2. Strain the sauce and add the truffles and sherry.

  3. Pour about 1 tablespoon of sauce over each quail after draining off excess grease.

  4. Serve the quails in their cases.

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. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Quail + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Chicken + truffletop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Liver + truffletop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Quail + truffletop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together91 recipes

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

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, which is cooked tender inside its paper case.
Chicken livers
Form a rich, smooth stuffing that moistens the lean quail meat as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the pan that starts the stuffing.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Brown sauce
Gives the finished sauce body and a deep, savoury colour.
Sherry
Adds acidity and sweetness that balance the rich livers and sauce.

The step that matters

Draining off excess grease before saucing. Quail cooked in fat releases grease into the case. If it is not drained, the sauce will float on oil and taste heavy, and the crisp bird will soften.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, chicken, liver, shallot, pepper, truffle, sauce):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, chicken, liver, shallot, pepper, truffle, sauce. 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.

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