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Game Pie

A savory pie made with fresh game, bacon, optional truffles and tongue, baked with a flour and water crust and aspic jelly topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Game 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 meat

  1. Remove any tainted parts from the game.

  2. Cut the game meat into large pieces.

  3. Pound the smaller meat fragments with half-boiled bacon in a mortar.

  4. Season the pounded meat.

  5. Simmer the bones in cold water to make a small quantity of rich broth.

Bake the pie

  1. Layer the large pieces and the pounded meat in a deep dish.

  2. Moisten the layered meat with the broth.

  3. Cover the dish with a flour and water paste.

  4. Bake the covered dish at 350°F (175°C) for three hours.

  5. Let the dish cool.

  6. Remove the paste.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the dish in an ornamental frame.

  2. Cover the dish with broken bits of aspic jelly.

  3. Arrange croutons around the dish.

  4. Garnish with a wreath of parsley.

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

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Truffle + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Truffle + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,106 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Game meat
Forms the main body of the pie, providing its flavour and substance.
Half-boiled bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the pounded meat, keeping it tender and binding it.
Flour
Forms the water-based paste that seals the dish and traps moisture during baking.
Aspic jelly
Adds a gelatin layer on top that sets as it cools, giving a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Moisten the layered meat with the broth. Meat loses moisture during long baking, so the broth replaces liquid lost and keeps the filling juicy. Adding it before sealing the paste helps the pie stay moist.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, pepper, flour. 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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