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Compote of Quails

Compote of Quails is a sauce of butter, sweetbread, ham, mushrooms, truffles, herbs, stock, Chablis, flour, lemon juice, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Compote of Quails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Rinse the quails and tuck their legs inside.

  2. Sauté the quails in butter for 1–2 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the quails to a stewpan with sweetbread, ham, mushrooms, truffles, herbs, stock, Chablis, and baked flour.

  2. Simmer until the quails are cooked through.

  3. Remove the quails.

  4. Keep the quails warm.

  5. Strain the sauce to remove ham and herbs.

  6. Add lemon juice.

  7. Reduce the sauce to desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the quails in a deep dish with croutons around.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooks gently in the stock and wine sauce.
Butter
Browns the quails and adds richness to the initial sauté.
Sweetbread
Adds a tender, rich texture to the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce.
Truffles
Add a deep, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Baked flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers and reduces.

The step that matters

Simmering until the quails are cooked through. Quail is small and lean, so it cooks quickly and can turn dry or tough if overcooked. Removing the birds once they are done keeps them tender while the sauce continues to reduce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, ham, mushroom, truffle, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, ham, mushroom, truffle, flour. 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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