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Cold Raised Pies

A pie made with game birds, bacon, truffles, and aspic, baked slowly and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and truffle work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 516 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cold Raised Pies

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

  1. Boil and trim the ham and tongues.

  2. Season and garnish the inside of the game with bacon, tongue, and truffles. Sew the game closed with a needle and twine to prevent filling from escaping.

Bake

  1. Line two round or oval baking pans with bacon.

  2. Arrange the birds neatly in the pans and cover with bacon and buttered paper.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 4 hours.

  4. Allow to cool after baking.

Make the aspic and assemble

  1. Prepare aspic-jelly with the carcasses, calves' feet, and vegetables, then clarify it.

  2. Reduce half of the aspic-jelly before pouring it into the pie.

  3. Make hot-water paste and line the inside of the pie with bacon and force-meat.

  4. Layer the birds starting with the goose at the bottom, filling gaps with force-meat.

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. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Truffle + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Truffle + livertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Ham + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Hot-water paste
Forms the sturdy shell that holds the pie's shape during baking and cooling.
Force-meat of fat livers
Fills gaps and adds richness and moisture so the pie stays tender when sliced.
Calves' feet
Provide gelatin, which sets the aspic-jelly so it firms as the pie cools.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, and keeps the birds moist during the long bake.

The step that matters

Reduce half of the aspic-jelly before pouring it into the pie. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavour so the jelly sets firmly and tastes rich. Pouring in thin, weak aspic can leave the pie loose and watery when sliced.

“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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