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Quail Pie

A baked pie of quails with salt pork, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon juice, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the quails

  1. Clean the quails.

  2. Truss the quails.

  3. Stuff the quails.

  4. Parboil the quails for 10 to 15 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the sides of a deep pan with rich pie crust.

  2. Place a couple of slices of salt pork or bacon in the bottom.

  3. Add slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Add butter.

  5. Add pepper.

  6. Place the quails in the pan.

  7. Sprinkle with minced parsley.

  8. Add lemon juice.

  9. Dot the quails with bits of butter rolled in flour.

  10. Layer more slices of egg.

  11. Layer bits of pork on top.

  12. Pour in the water used for parboiling.

  13. Cover with pie crust.

  14. Leave an opening in the center.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 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. 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 becomes tender and juicy as the pie bakes.
Salt pork or bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the meat and pan juices.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they are layered through the pie.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, enriching the filling and pan juices.
Flour
Coats the butter bits so they help thicken the juices in the pie.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavors of the filling.

The step that matters

Parboil the quails for 10 to 15 minutes. Parboiling partly cooks the birds so they finish tender in the oven without drying out. Boiling too long leaves the meat dry, while too short leaves it underdone. The cooking water is later poured into the pie to add moisture and flavor.

“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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