Skip to main content
Main

Game Pie

A savory pie with game birds, vegetables, and a butter‑flour sauce, topped with dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Game Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Simmer the game

  1. Split each bird in half.

  2. Place the halved birds in a saucepan with cold water or broth.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, mace, cloves, and bay leaf.

  6. Add salt pork, carrots, and onion.

  7. Boil until tender, ensuring broth covers the game.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in another saucepan.

  2. Mix in browned flour.

  3. Stir in some broth to create a thin sauce.

  4. Strain the broth from the first saucepan.

  5. Discard the vegetables and spices.

Assemble and bake

  1. Dice the potatoes.

  2. Place the diced potatoes in a deep baking dish.

  3. Pour the game mixture over the potatoes.

  4. Cover with dough.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Birds
Provide the main meat, whose flavor is carried into the broth and sauce.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Potatoes
Form a starchy base under the meat that soaks up the cooking liquid.
Dough
Forms a golden top crust that seals in the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, keeping the game covered. Small birds cook quickly and can turn dry or tough if overboiled, while liquid that drops below the meat leaves it unevenly cooked. Gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and the broth rich.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, beef, pepper, clove, pork, carrot, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, beef, pepper, clove, pork, carrot, onion. 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.

More game pie recipes

English 13Christmas 6Forcemeat 4Raised 4Venison and Hare 4French 3 See all 39 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes