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Quail Pie

A savory pie made with quail, salt pork or ham, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon juice, flour, and parboiling gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Quail Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quail

  1. Clean, truss, and stuff the quail.

  2. Loosen the joints with a knife, but do not separate them.

  3. Parboil the quail for 10 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Prepare a puff pastry and line a deep dish with it.

  2. Add shreds of salt pork or ham to the bottom of the dish.

  3. Layer hard-boiled eggs, buttered and peppered.

  4. Add the quail, sprinkled with pepper and minced parsley.

  5. Squeeze lemon juice over the quail.

  6. Place pieces of butter rolled in flour on their breasts.

  7. Cover with slices of egg and shredded ham.

  8. Pour in some of the gravy from parboiling the quails.

  9. Put on the lid, leaving a hole in the middle.

Bake

  1. Bake for over an hour at 350°F (175°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.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Quail
Forms the main filling, cooked gently so the meat stays tender within the pastry.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling, layered between the meat and pastry.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and its fat helps the pastry brown.
Flour
Coats the butter pieces so they thicken the juices as the pie bakes.
Salt pork or ham
Contributes savory fat and salty flavor that seasons the quail and pie.
Gravy from parboiling quails
Adds moisture and savory flavor, keeping the filling from drying out in the oven.

The step that matters

Put on the lid, leaving a hole in the middle.. The vent lets steam escape while the pie bakes. Without it, pressure can build and the pastry may puff unevenly or the filling may turn watery.

“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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