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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: Mushroom and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,132 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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

  1. Joint the quail as you would a chicken for fricassee.

  2. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with thin slices of partially boiled bacon to extract the salt.

Assemble

  1. Pour ½ cup of white sauce over the bacon.

  2. Add a few mushrooms or 2 teaspoons of mushroom catsup and 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley.

  3. Top with puff pastry and cut a slit in the middle.

Bake and finish

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Quail + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 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, which becomes tender as it cooks in the covered dish.
Streaky bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the pie as it cooks.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy body that keeps the filling from drying out.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp top crust that browns in the oven.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy, savoury flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake covered, then uncover to brown. Baking covered keeps the quail and sauce moist while the meat cooks through. Uncovering only at the end lets the pastry brown without overcooking the filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, 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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