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Quails a LA Lesseps

Quails stuffed with potato and ragout, baked, glazed with brown chaudfroid sauce and liquid aspic, garnished by aspic, pâté de foie gras, chervil, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Quails a LA Lesseps

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 the quail

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dry the potato pieces with a cloth and rub them with butter.

  3. Stuff each quail with a potato and fasten with buttered paper bands.

  4. Place the quails in a buttered sauté pan and add sherry.

  5. Bake for about 15 minutes, then let cool.

  6. Remove the papers and potatoes.

Fill and mask

  1. Fill the quails with the ragout using a piping bag.

  2. Chill until the ragout is set.

  3. Cut each quail in half with a warm, wet knife.

  4. Mask each half with brown chaudfroid sauce, then lightly coat with liquid aspic jelly.

Arrange and serve

  1. Arrange the halves around a timbal of clear ice.

  2. Garnish with finely chopped aspic, pâté de foie gras, chervil, and tarragon.

  3. Before serving, place a lighted night-light in the center of the ice timbal.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Potato + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Quail
Forms the main meat, cooked gently in sherry and butter so it stays moist inside its shell.
Potatoes
Fill the birds while baking, holding their shape and keeping the cavity open until the ragout is added.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown and coat the potatoes and pan.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and moistens the quail as it bakes in the pan.

The step that matters

Cut each quail in half with a warm, wet knife. The ragout must be fully set first, and a warm, wet blade glides through both the chilled filling and the mask without tearing or smearing the cut surface.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, butter, sherry, sauce, chervil, tarragon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, butter, sherry, sauce, chervil, tarragon. 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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