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Quail on Toast

Quail on toast is roasted quail served on toasted bread with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Quail on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the quail

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the quails open down the back.

  3. Season the quails with salt and pepper.

  4. Dredge the quails lightly with flour.

  5. Flatten the quails.

Bake and fry

  1. Place the quails in a pan with butter and water, covering tightly.

  2. Bake the quails in the oven until nearly done, about 15-20 minutes.

  3. Transfer the quails to a skillet.

  4. Fry the quails until browned, about 5 minutes.

Serve on toast

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Butter the toasted bread.

  3. Cut the crusts to make them tender.

  4. Place the fried quails on the toast.

  5. Make a gravy from the pan drippings.

  6. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  7. Pour the gravy over the quails.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Quails
Provide the main meat, which cooks through in the oven and browns in the skillet.
Flour
Light dredging coat that browns during frying and helps the surface crisp.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan and to the buttered toast.

The step that matters

Covering the quails tightly while baking. Trapping steam in the covered pan cooks the quail gently and keeps it moist, so it does not dry out before the final browning in the skillet.

“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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