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Hot Quail Pie, with Mushrooms

A savory pie filled with quail, mushrooms, bacon, and herbs, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot 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 ↓

Hot Quail Pie, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quails

  1. Singe the quails, remove the backbone, and cut off the necks and feet.

  2. Truss the quails with their legs inwards and wipe them clean with a napkin.

Make the filling

  1. In a large skillet, melt the butter and add the grated bacon, parsley, mushrooms, shallot, seasoning salt, and nutmeg. Cook the mixture over moderate heat for 5 minutes, turning the quails to ensure they are well seasoned.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust and cover the bottom and sides with the godiveau mixed with sweet herbs.

  2. Once the quails are cool, arrange them in the pie in a crown shape, adding the round mushrooms in the center.

  3. Season the top, add laurel leaves, and place slices of larding bacon on top.

Serve

  1. Before serving, remove the fat and cover the inside with demi-Spanish sauce and garnish with white mushrooms.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Parsley + laureltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 arranged whole in the pie crown.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the seasonings into the filling as it melts.
Grated bacon
Adds savory fat and salty flavor to the filling.
Godiveau or other force-meat
Forms a seasoned meat layer that lines the crust beneath the quails.
Fine round mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture at the centre of the pie.

The step that matters

Cool the quails before arranging them in the pie. Placing hot quails in the crust can soften the pastry and melt the fat unevenly, so letting them cool first helps keep the crust crisp and the filling set.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, parsley, mushroom, shallot, meat, laurel):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, parsley, mushroom, shallot, meat, laurel. 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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