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Quail Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed quail, bread crumbs, parsley, eggs, butter, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the quails

  1. Clean the quails and season them with salt and pepper.

  2. Stuff the quails with bread crumbs or oyster dressing.

  3. Stew the quails for a few minutes, keeping them well covered.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a dish with rich puff pastry.

  2. Place the stewed quails in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle minced parsley, finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, and butter rolled in flour over the quails.

  4. Add the gravy from the stewing process.

  5. Cover with more puff pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about one hour.

  6. Add a little lemon juice for extra flavor.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooked gently by stewing before baking.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the gravy and enrich the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the stewing gravy so the filling becomes saucy rather than watery.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, mild texture to the filling.
Gravy from stewing the birds
Supplies moisture and savory flavor that keeps the filling juicy under the pastry.

The step that matters

Stew the quails gently and well covered. Covering and cooking gently keeps moisture in the meat, so the birds stay tender and produce a flavorful gravy rather than drying out before the long bake.

“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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