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Snipe Pie

A savory pie made with snipe, beef forcemeat, and a sauce of broth, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Snipe 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 filling

  1. Parboil the snipe in bouillon and white wine with grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing beef, fat pork, butter, and soaked roll crumbs.

  3. Season the forcemeat with grated onion, pounded pepper, allspice, cloves, mushrooms, and gherkins.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Line a dish with the forcemeat, place the snipe inside with some broth and a small piece of butter.

  2. Cover with a thick layer of forcemeat and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. Combine soup, white wine, water, and butter rolled in flour. Stir until smooth.

  4. When the sauce begins to boil, add sliced pickled gherkins or lemon.

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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Beef
Forms the bulk of the forcemeat, giving it body and a firm, sliceable texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and gives the sauce body.
Rolls
Soaked crumbs bind the forcemeat and keep the meat tender and moist.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and adds flavour to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it thickens. Butter rolled in flour must be whisked smooth as the liquid heats; otherwise the flour clumps and the sauce stays lumpy and pasty instead of thickening evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice. 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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