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Cailles Farcies En Caisses Aux Petits Pois

Quails stuffed with a liver, bacon, shallot, foie gras mixture, baked with mirepoix and green peas, finished with glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cailles Farcies En Caisses Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Slice the livers, bacon, and shallots.

  2. In a sauté pan, melt the butter and add the sliced ingredients.

  3. Add the bouquet garni and season with pepper.

  4. Cook over high heat for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove the herbs.

  6. Pound the mixture until smooth.

  7. Add the foie gras (cut into small pieces) and rub through a sieve.

Stuff and braise

  1. Stuff the quails with the mixture.

  2. Shape each bird neatly.

  3. Place them in a braising pan on a bed of mirepoix.

  4. Moisten with a little white wine.

  5. Cover with buttered paper.

  6. Braise in the oven.

  7. When half done, add the brown sauce and the remaining wine.

Glaze and serve

  1. Let the birds cool.

  2. Strain the braising liquid into a small saucepan.

  3. Remove the fat.

  4. Reduce to a glaze consistency.

  5. Coat the quails with the glaze.

  6. Mix a little aspic with the meat glaze and dissolve over low heat.

  7. Cut the quails in half.

  8. Place them cut side up.

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. Shallot + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Quail + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Give the filling a rich, soft texture and savoury depth.
Foie gras
Adds fat and smoothness, making the filling silky and rich.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury, smoky flavour to the filling.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps soften the shallots and livers without browning.
White wine
Adds moisture and acidity to the braising liquid.
Brown sauce
Adds body and concentrated savoury flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling over high heat. Chicken livers cook quickly and turn dry and grainy if overcooked. Removing them from high heat while still tender keeps the mixture soft enough to pound smooth and sieve.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, chicken, liver, butter, shallot, pepper, meat):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, chicken, liver, butter, shallot, pepper, meat. 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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