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Moor Game Pie

A pie of seasoned game birds, trimmings, beef gravy, butter, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Moor Game Pie

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 the birds

  1. Season the birds with cayenne, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. If using small birds, keep them whole; larger birds can be divided.

  3. Boil any trimmings to make gravy.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, combine the trimmings gravy with some beef gravy.

  2. Place the seasoned birds in the dish and add bits of butter on top.

  3. Optionally, lay seasoned rump steak at the bottom of the dish with the trimmings gravy.

  4. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Serve

  1. For a hot pie, mix melted butter with claret and lemon juice, and pour it in through a funnel before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 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

Small birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it cooks under the pastry.
Beef gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth, keeping the meat from drying out during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting into the meat and gravy as the pie bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden crust that seals in the filling.

“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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