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Quail with Stewed Peas

Quail with stewed peas is a dish of boiled quail served with stewed peas and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and peas work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 171 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Quail with Stewed Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Clean and truss the quail like chickens for boiling.

  2. Place quail in a stewpan with bacon and bouquet garni.

  3. Cover with thin layers of bacon and moisten with stock and Sherry.

  4. Stew gently for 45 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix stewed peas with a little quail stock reduced to a glaze.

  2. Arrange quail in a circle with breasts outwards and a slice of bacon between each.

  3. Fill the center with stewed peas.

  4. Mix quail stock with Espagnole sauce and pour around and over the quail.

  5. Serve.

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. Sherry + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Wine + peastop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Quail + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Quail + peastop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Quail + sherrytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the stewpan.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the quail as it stews.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, lifting the savoury flavour.
Stewed peas
Provides a soft, starchy base that fills the centre of the dish.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 45 minutes. Gentle heat lets connective tissue in the quail soften slowly without drying or toughening the meat. Boiling hard would tighten the proteins and make the birds tough.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, sherry, wine, sauce):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, sherry, wine, sauce. 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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