Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
A Christmas Goose Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Make the paste
Put one pound of butter cut up and a pint and a half of water into a sauce‑pan; stir while melting and let it come to a boil.
Skim off any milk or impurities that rise to the top.
Have ready four pounds of flour sifted into a pan.
Make a hole in the middle of the flour and pour in the melted butter while hot.
Mix with a spoon to a stiff paste, adding the beaten yolks of three or four eggs.
Knead the paste very well with your hands on the pasteboard, keeping it dredged with flour until it ceases to be sticky.
Set the dough aside to cool.
Prepare the filling
Split a large goose and a fowl down the back, loosen the flesh all over with a sharp knife, and remove all the bones.
Parboil a smoked tongue; peel it and cut off the root.
Mix powdered nutmeg, a quarter of an ounce of powdered mace, a teaspoonful of pepper, and a teaspoonful of salt; season the fowl and goose with this mixture.
Place the goose, then the fowl, then the tongue inside the crust.
Fill remaining space with pieces of pigeon, partridge, quail, or other game meat; ensure no bones remain.
Add bits of ham or force‑meat balls if desired.
Cover the filling with half a pound of butter.
Build and bake the pie
Roll out the dough to about an inch thick and divide it into three pieces.
Cut two pieces into oval shapes for the top and bottom; cut the third into a long straight piece for the sides or walls.
Brush the dough all over with beaten egg white.
Set the wall piece on the bottom, pinching the edges together and cementing them with egg white.
Ensure the bottom piece is large enough to turn up a little around the lower edge of the wall piece, and join firmly all round.
Place the top crust, also oval, over the filling, positioned an inch and a half below the top edge of the wall.
Close the pie tightly, ornamenting the sides and top with festoons and leaves cut out of paste.
Notch the edges and place a paste flower in the centre.
Glaze the whole with beaten egg yolk.
Bind the pie all round with a double fold of white paper.
Set the pie in a regular oven and bake for four hours.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
Counts 6 of 9 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Butter | 1 tbsp (14g) | 102 |
| Egg | 1 large egg (50g) | 78 |
| Nutmeg | 1 tsp ground (2.2g) | 12 |
| Black Pepper | 1 tsp ground (2.3g) | 6 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Mace | not in our table | 0 |
| Goose | not in our table | 0 |
| Pie | not in our table | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,557 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
-
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
-
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Butter
- Adds richness and tenderness to the paste and moisture to the filling.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten structure that gives the paste its stiff, sturdy walls.
- Eggs
- Egg yolks bind the paste; egg white and yolk seal and glaze the crust for browning.
- Goose
- Provides the rich, fatty meat that bastes the filling as it bakes.
The step that matters
Knead the paste until it stops sticking. Kneading develops gluten so the dough holds its shape as a raised wall; under-kneaded paste slumps and can leak fat during the long bake.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, nutmeg, pepper):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, nutmeg, pepper. 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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