Skip to main content
Main

Quails, Fried

Fried quails seasoned with salt and cayenne, coated in flour and fried, served with toast, watercress, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quails, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the quail and prepare as for roasting.

  2. Season flour with a little coarse sea salt and a hint of cayenne pepper.

  3. Dip the quail halves in melted butter, then in the seasoned flour, shaking off excess.

Fry and serve

  1. Cook in a frying pan with hot fat, reducing heat after the first minute to cook through without burning.

  2. Serve on toast or fried bread, garnished with watercress and lemon slices.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Quail + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Flour and butter 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

Quail
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat inside a crisp coating.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat.
Melted butter
Helps the seasoned flour adhere to the quail and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Reducing the heat after the first minute. Searing over high heat first sets and browns the coating, but staying high would scorch the flour and butter before the quail cooks through. Lowering the heat lets the meat cook gently to the centre while the coating stays golden rather than burnt.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes