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Salad

Quail Salad

A salad of shredded lettuce topped with cooked quail, hard‑boiled eggs, olives, beetroot, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Quail Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the shredded lettuce on a serving dish.

  2. Cut the boned quails into neat pieces and lay them on top of the lettuce.

  3. Pour mayonnaise or dressing over the quails.

  4. Add a small lettuce heart in the center.

  5. Surround with cress leaves and slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  6. Garnish the base with stoned olives, beetroot shapes, and more egg 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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Olive + beetroottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Quail + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Quail + olivetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Provide the main protein, cooked and chilled so the pieces hold their shape on the salad.
Mayonnaise or dressing
Adds moisture and richness, coating the quail and lettuce with fat and flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild protein element that contrasts with the tender quail and crisp greens.
Crisp lettuce
Forms a cool, crunchy base that holds the dressing and adds texture.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, lettuce, egg, olive. 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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