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Cailles Roties

Roasted quail served on toast with butter, broth, salt, pepper, and cresses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Quail and pork work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 308 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cailles Roties

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 birds

  1. Clean, draw, and truss the quails neatly.

  2. Tie a piece of fat pork over the breast of each bird.

  3. Place the birds in a baking pan with butter and boiling water.

Roast

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 to 20 minutes, basting frequently with hot butter.

Prepare the toast and serve

  1. Prepare a piece of toast for each bird, removing the crust.

  2. Moisten the toast with boiling broth and butter.

  3. Remove the pork from the birds and place them on the toast.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, 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 + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Quail + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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 cooked whole and served on the toast.
Fat pork
Bastes the breast meat with melting fat, keeping it moist and tender during roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and helps browning while basting the birds and moistening the toast.
Toast
Soaks up pan juices and broth, giving a soft base that holds the birds.
Broth
Moistens the toast, adding savory flavour and moisture under the birds.

The step that matters

Basting the birds during roasting. Frequent basting with hot butter carries heat over the surface and keeps the lean breast meat from drying out, while promoting even browning. Quail cooks quickly, so overcooking is easy.

“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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