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Game Pie

A savory pie made with game meat, vegetables, and broth, topped with aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Game Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Stew the bones of the game with carrots, onions, celery, and sweet herbs in 2 quarts of water until flavorful.

  2. Strain the broth, season with salt and sugar, let it cool, and remove any grease.

  3. Color the broth with brown food coloring, clarify, and reduce to a half-glaze consistency.

Assemble and cook

  1. Cut the boned game into neat fillets and fry in a little butter until set.

  2. Line a pie dish with rows of farci meat and game, sprinkling each layer with pepper, salt, parsley, and truffles.

  3. Fill the dish to within an inch of the top and pour the remaining stock over it.

  4. Place the dish in a stewpan of warm water and simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish

  1. Once cooked, press the top flat with a dish and cover with Aspic Jelly when cool.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boned game
Provides the main meat, which is fried briefly so the fillets set before baking.
Farci meat
Forms a seasoned, moist layer that fills the pie between the game pieces.
Butter
Fat for frying the game fillets, adding browning and richness to the surface.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stock as it simmers.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the stock.
Aspic jelly
Sets on top as a clear glaze that protects and finishes the pie.

The step that matters

Simmering the pie in warm water. Cooking gently in a water bath heats the filling evenly and keeps the meat moist; a rolling boil can toughen the protein and make the pie dry.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, sugar, butter, meat, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, sugar, butter, meat, 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.

More game pie recipes

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

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