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Quails a LA Tosca

Quails à la Tosca is a dish of quails coated in mushroom and shallot mixture, fried, and served with béchamel and champagne sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Quails a LA Tosca

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quails

  1. Pick, singe, and bone the quails, leaving half the leg-bone in the bottom part of the leg with the foot on.

  2. Season the quails with chopped mushrooms, shallots, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. In a buttered sauté pan, sauté the quails for 2–3 minutes, then press them until cold.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix hot béchamel with raw egg yolks over heat until thickened, then strain.

  2. Add chopped ham, rubbed hard-boiled egg yolks, and parsley to the sauce.

Coat and fry

  1. Mask the quails with the prepared sauce, sprinkle with flour, dip in beaten egg, and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Repeat the coating step twice.

  3. Fry the quails in clean boiling fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a border of mashed potatoes, placing a crouton filled with mushroom puree in the center.

  2. Garnish with prepared financiere and serve with champagne sauce.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Quails
Provide the meat that is boned, pressed, coated and fried as the main dish.
Butter
Enriches the quails during the initial sauté and adds flavour to the browning.
Egg yolks
Thicken the béchamel into a smooth, enriched sauce when heated.
Fresh white bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Flour
Dries the surface so the beaten egg and crumbs adhere evenly.
Béchamel sauce
Forms the rich, creamy base of the sauce that masks the quails.

The step that matters

Heating the béchamel with egg yolks. Heating egg yolks gently while stirring thickens them into the sauce. If the heat is too high they can scramble and curdle, so the sauce must be straining smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, mushroom, shallot, pepper, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, mushroom, shallot, pepper, butter, flour, egg. 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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