Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Quail

Broiled quail served on toast with butter, pepper, salt, and garnished with cresses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Broiled Quail

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quail

  1. Pluck, clean, and split the quail, wiping with a damp cloth.

  2. Heat the grill and place the quail bone side down.

Broil

  1. Rub the breasts with butter and broil for about 8 minutes.

  2. Turn the quail breast side down and broil for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Ensure they do not scorch or dry out.

Serve on toast

  1. Prepare toast for each bird, moisten with boiling broth, and butter generously.

  2. Place the quail on the toast, butter the breasts, and sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Set in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 minute to melt the butter.

  4. Garnish with cresses and serve with a salad.

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. Butter + peppertop 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
Provides the main meat, cooked quickly by broiling so the flesh stays tender.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and browns on the surface during broiling.
Toast
Soaks up broth and butter, forming a moist base beneath the quail.

The step that matters

Broil without letting the quail scorch or dry out. Lean quail meat dries quickly under high direct heat. Butter helps protect the breasts and promotes even browning, so watching the surface and timing both sides matters.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes