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Game Pie, English

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Game Pie, English

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Trim the venison and rub it with mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the trimmings of venison and inferior joints of the hare to make gravy.

  3. Fill the boned back and thighs of the hare with stuffing made from minced liver and shallot.

  4. Line a dish with short crust pastry, add the venison and hare, and fill every space with forcemeat.

  5. Add a little gravy, cover with pastry, ornament the top, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about two and a half hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Venison + livertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Shallot + livertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together268 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mace + shallottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, nutmeg, shallot, liver):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, nutmeg, shallot, liver. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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