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Amiens Pie

A duck pie filled with farce, veal, bacon, and truffles, baked with a rich stock-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Amiens Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ducks

  1. Bone the ducks and fill them with farce.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with a little stock and cover with bacon.

  3. Simmer on low heat for 1 hour, then cool in the cooking liquid.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer a few slices of veal at the bottom of the pie crust, followed by farce.

  2. Add the ducks and their cooking liquid, then cover with bacon.

  3. Before baking, add the peeled truffles to the pie.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate stew pan, combine the duck bones, giblets, mace, sherry, stock, and shallots.

  2. Boil slowly for 2 hours, then strain and skim the fat.

  3. Melt butter in a stew pan, add flour to absorb the butter, then add the strained liquid.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes, strain again, and pour into the pie.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie at 300°F (150°C) for 2 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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ducks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering and cooling in their liquid.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the strained liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms the base that thickens it.
Truffles
Add a distinctive earthy aroma to the pie.
Bacon
Covers the ducks, adding fat and savoury flavour as they cook and bake.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it boils down.

The step that matters

Cooling the ducks in their cooking liquid. Cooling slowly in the liquid keeps the meat moist and prevents it drying out before it is baked in the pie.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sherry, shallot, butter, flour, truffle):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sherry, shallot, butter, flour, truffle. 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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