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Quail Pie

A savory pie made with quails, salt pork or ham, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, onion, parsley, lemon, flour, and gravy, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Quail Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean, truss, and stuff the quails. Loosen the joints with a penknife, but do not separate them.

  2. Parboil the quails for 10 minutes.

  3. Prepare a puff pastry and line a deep dish with it.

Assemble

  1. Place shredded salt pork or ham at the bottom of the dish.

  2. Add a layer of sliced hard-boiled eggs and sprinkle with minced onion.

  3. Season with pepper and minced parsley, then squeeze lemon juice over the mixture.

  4. Place the parboiled quails on top, sprinkle with more pepper, and add pieces of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Cover with slices of egg and shredded ham.

  6. Pour in some of the gravy from parboiling the quails.

  7. Cover with the pastry lid, leaving a hole in the middle.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for over an hour.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 through slowly under the pastry.
Butter
Melts into the pie, adding richness and moisture to the filling.
Flour
Coats the butter pieces and thickens the gravy as the pie bakes.
Salt pork or ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that seasons the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the layered filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and fat.

The step that matters

Cover with the pastry lid, leaving a hole in the middle.. The vent lets steam escape so the pastry bakes crisp rather than soggy, and it keeps the pressure from building under the crust.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, pork, egg, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, pork, egg, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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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