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Raised Pie of Woodcocks

A raised pie made from halved woodcocks seasoned with pepper and salt and combined with godiveau farce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Raised Pie of Woodcocks

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 and cook

  1. Cut each woodcock in half.

  2. In a sauté pan, melt a little butter and add the woodcocks.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until firm.

Cool and assemble

  1. Let them cool.

  2. Pound the trail with some godiveau farce.

  3. Make the pie as directed for partridge.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Woodcocks
The main meat, which firms and browns as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the birds and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Woodcock is a lean game bird, so overbaking squeezes out moisture and leaves the meat dry and tough. Stop once the birds feel firm, since they will keep cooking as they rest and are baked again in the pie.

“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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