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Quail Pie

A baked quail pie with bacon, white sauce, mushrooms or mushroom catsup, parsley, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Quail Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Partially boil the bacon to extract the salt.

  2. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with the bacon slices.

  3. Pour the white sauce over the bacon.

  4. Add the mushrooms or mushroom catsup and chopped parsley.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with puff pastry and cut a slit in the middle.

  2. Bake covered at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

  3. Uncover and brown the top.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Quail + chickentop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Quail + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Provides the main meat of the filling, which becomes tender during the long covered bake.
Streaky bacon
Adds salty, fatty flavor that seasons the white sauce and filling.
White sauce
Binds the filling and keeps it moist during baking.
Mushrooms
Adds earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky crust that rises and browns when baked.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown the top. Puff pastry browns only when exposed to dry oven heat. Baking it covered traps steam, which keeps the crust pale and soft, so the cover must come off for the final browning.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, chicken, sauce, mushroom. 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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