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Quails, Roasted

Roasted quails stuffed with breadcrumb and liver mixture, wrapped in bacon, cooked with Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Quails, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. Prepare the quails for stuffing.

  2. In a pot, combine milk, butter, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in breadcrumbs and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the bay leaf and stir in egg yolks.

  5. Chop chicken livers and sauté in butter with shallot.

  6. Season with salt and pepper, then strain through a sieve.

  7. Mix the liver puree with the breadcrumb mixture and stuff the quails.

Roast and finish

  1. Wrap each quail in a slice of bacon and place in a casserole with remaining butter.

  2. Cook over low heat for 1 hour.

  3. Pour off excess fat, add Madeira sauce, and finish cooking.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Quail + chickentop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Absorb the warm milk and butter, giving the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Chicken livers
Add rich, savoury flavour and a smooth, creamy texture to the stuffing when puréed.
Bacon
Bastes the quail with its fat and adds savoury, browned flavour during cooking.
Madeira sauce
Adds sweetness, depth and a rich, glossy finish to the cooked birds.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat for 1 hour. Gentle, low heat lets the quail cook through slowly while the stuffing sets and the bacon renders without the birds drying out or the fat burning.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, milk, butter, pepper, egg, chicken, liver):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, milk, butter, pepper, egg, chicken, liver. 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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