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To Broil Quail or Woodcock

A simple broiled quail or woodcock seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, served with buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Broil Quail or Woodcock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the quail or woodcock and split them down the back.

Broil and serve

  1. Lay them on a well-greased grill, inside down.

  2. Broil slowly until they are a delicate brown.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and plenty of butter.

  4. Serve with buttered, dry toast.

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

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail or woodcock
Forms the main protein, which browns and cooks through under the grill.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour over the finished birds.

The step that matters

Broil slowly until they are a delicate brown. Slow heat cooks the birds through while the surface browns gently. Too much heat would scorch the outside before the inside is cooked, leaving the meat dry and bitter.

“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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