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Broiled Quail

A dish of quail roasted over a clear fire, served on buttered toast with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quail

  1. Remove the feathers from the quail without scalding and dress them carefully.

  2. Soak the quail in salt water for a short time, then split them down the back.

  3. Dry the quail with a cloth and rub them with butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the quail on a grill over a clear fire, turning frequently and adding bits of butter.

  2. When done, season with coarse sea salt.

  3. Prepare a slice of thin toast, butter it, and place it on a hot dish.

  4. Lay a quail, breast side up, on each slice of toast and garnish with currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Quail + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main meat, cooked whole after being split so it browns evenly over the fire.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the lean birds from drying and helping the skin brown.
Thin toast
Soaks up juices from the birds and serves as a crisp base beneath the quail.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury quail.

The step that matters

Turning on the grill. Quail is lean and small, so over a hot fire it can scorch on the outside before the inside cooks. Frequent turning and added butter spread the heat and keep the meat moist.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter. 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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