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Bird Pie with Pickle Poek

A savory pie made with small birds, pickled pork, stock, and spices, baked in a pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bird Pie with Pickle Poek

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the birds in butter until browned.

  2. Add the pickled pork, browned flour, stock, salt, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

  3. Cook for about 45 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture into a pastry shell and bake until the pastry is 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Birds
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the filling.
Butter
Browns the birds during frying and adds richness to the filling.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the filling throughout.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the filling into a moist, savoury mixture.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the birds in butter. Frying until well browned builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale birds will give a flatter, less savoury filling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter, flour. 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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