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Dessert

Blackbird Pie

A pie made with blackbirds stuffed with butter, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and egg yolk mixture, topped with hard‑boiled yolks, gravy, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Blackbird 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 stuffing

  1. Soak the French roll in milk.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and egg yolks until thick.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the blackbirds.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with fried steak, place the birds on top, and add the hard-boiled yolks.

  2. Pour gravy over the birds, cover with puff pastry, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Blackbirds
Form the main filling that is stuffed and baked in the pie.
French roll
Soaked in milk to form a moist, binding base for the stuffing.
Butter
Melts to enrich the stuffing with fat and a rich flavour.
Egg yolks
Cook and thicken the stuffing, helping it set and bind together.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust over the pie as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sautéing the stuffing until thick. Egg yolks thicken and set when heated, but overheating can curdle them. Cook gently and stop once the mixture is thick so the stuffing binds without turning grainy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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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