A quail egg is a miniature, prettily speckled egg — roughly a fifth the size of a hen's egg — laid mainly by the domesticated Japanese quail. Its cream-to-buff shell is mottled with brown and near-black blotches unique to each hen, and inside sits a proportionally large, deep-golden yolk over a thin ribbon of white. The flavour is essentially that of a hen's egg but slightly richer and more concentrated, and its jewel-like size has made it a fixture of Asian street food, canapés, garnishes and fine dining alike.