Name: Quail Pie
Ingredients: quails; veal stock; flour; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quail Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Stew the quails in veal stock for about 10 minutes.
Remove the quails and thicken the gravy with a little flour and a small piece of butter.
Add a little pepper and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and bake

Fill the dish with the gravy and cover it with a pastry.
Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Quail + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Quail + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together512 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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 as it stews in the stock.
Veal stock: Supplies the liquid and savory flavor for the gravy.
Flour: Thickens the gravy so it holds together under the pastry.
Butter: Adds richness and body to the thickened gravy.

“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.