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Broiled Quail

Roasted quail served on buttered toast with a topping of currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Prepare the quails

  1. Remove the feathers from the quails without scalding them.

  2. Carefully clean the quails and soak them in salt water for a short time.

  3. Split the quails down the back and dry them with a cloth.

Grill

  1. Rub the quails with butter and place them on a grill over a clear fire.

  2. Turn the quails frequently and add bits of butter on top.

  3. Once cooked, season with coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Prepare a slice of thin toast, butter it, and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Lay a quail, breast side up, on each slice of toast.

  3. Garnish with currant jelly.

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. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Quail + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 cooks quickly over a clear fire and stays moist when basted with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin brown as it is rubbed on and spooned over the birds.
Thin toast
Acts as a crisp, absorbent base that soaks up butter and juices under the quail.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, savory meat.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the quails over the fire. Quail is small and lean, so it dries out and chars quickly over direct heat. Frequent turning spreads the heat evenly, and butter basting adds moisture and promotes golden browning.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter. 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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