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Mock Quail on Toast

A dish of boiled pork shanks served on buttered toast with a creamy pot liquor sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mock Quail on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Scrape, wash, and dry the pork shanks.

  2. Place a plate in an iron kettle and put the shanks on it.

  3. Pour boiling water over the shanks and add salt.

  4. Boil until the meat falls from the bones.

  5. Pour off the liquid into a pan and set the meat aside.

  6. Cut the meat into unbroken pieces about 3 inches long.

  7. Steam the meat over hot salted water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, reheat 1 cup of pot liquor with ½ cup of cream, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Prepare 5 slices of toast, butter them, and place a piece of meat on each slice.

  3. Pour the sauce over the toast.

  4. If a thicker sauce is desired, mix cornstarch with milk, boil, and pour over the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork shanks
Provide the meat, which becomes tender and falls from the bone during long boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Pot liquor
Concentrated cooking broth that gives the sauce its savoury meaty flavour.
White bread
Forms the base that soaks up the sauce and supports the meat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce when a firmer consistency is wanted.

The step that matters

Boil until the meat falls from the bones. Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue into gelatin, making the meat tender. Stopping too early leaves it tough and hard to cut into intact pieces.

“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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