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Game Pie

A pie of older game birds with onion, mushrooms, bacon, hard‑boiled eggs, and a thick sauce, topped with pastry.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,118 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven220C (425F / Gas)
Time30 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the game

  1. Choose older birds or woodpigeons, rather than young roasting game.

  2. Put them into a pan with the bouquet garni and cover with stock or water plus salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer, covered, until the meat begins to part from the bone and can be cut away from the carcass in good-sized pieces.

  4. Arrange them in a pie dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the onion and mushrooms lightly in the butter until golden.

  2. Stir in the flour, and enough stock to make a rich, fairly thick but not gluey sauce.

  3. Simmer while cutting the bacon rashers into convenient-sized pieces.

  4. Lightly grill the bacon pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the bacon pieces round the meat, along with pieces of hard-boiled egg.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  3. Pour over the onion and mushroom sauce, which should come to within half an inch of the top of the pie dish.

  4. Cover with puff or shortcrust pastry in the usual way.

  5. Brush over with beaten egg.

  6. Bake for 30 minutes at 220C (425F / Gas).

  7. Lower the heat once the pastry has risen well and is nicely browned.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,619 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,578 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together25,834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Game birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering until it parts from the bone.
Butter
Fat that browns the onion and mushrooms, adding richness and golden colour.
Plain flour
Thickens the stock into a rich sauce that holds the filling together.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the butter.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, creamy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce to the right consistency. Flour must be stirred in and cooked with stock so it swells evenly and thickens. Too little liquid or uneven mixing leaves a gluey or lumpy sauce, and a thin one runs out of the pie when baked.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, mushroom, butter, flour, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, mushroom, butter, flour, egg, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More game pie recipes

English 13Christmas 6Forcemeat 4Raised 4Venison and Hare 4French 3 See all 39 →

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