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Quails in Cases

Quails stuffed with liver, bacon, truffle, and herbs, baked in paper cases.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and chicken work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Quails in Cases

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the quail and stuffing

  1. Draw and clean the quails, removing half of the backbone.

  2. In a frying pan, cook the quail livers and chicken livers with the rasped fat bacon until done.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then pound it with an equal amount of chopped fat bacon and the chopped truffle.

  4. Season the mixture and stuff the quails with half of it, then sew them up and truss them.

  5. In a stewpan, melt some butter and fry the quails until half-cooked.

Assemble the cases

  1. Mix the remaining force-meat with the cooked fine herbs and spread it in the bottom of the oiled paper cases.

  2. Place a quail in each case, set them on a baking sheet lined with double paper, and surround them with a strip of paper.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slack oven at 300°F (150°C) for 18-20 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven, plate the cases, and mask with the good sauce before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Liver + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 is stuffed, browned and then gently baked in its case.
Chicken livers
Add richness and a soft, savoury texture to the force-meat stuffing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the force-meat, keeping the stuffing tender while cooking.
Truffle
Contributes a strong, earthy aroma to the force-meat.
Madeira sauce
Adds depth and a sweet, rich flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Frying the quails until half-cooked. Browning the quails before the slow bake sets their colour and flavour and begins cooking the meat. Searing too long dries the birds, while stopping too early leaves them underdone when the baking ends.

“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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