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Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A pie filled with blackbirds or fieldfares, bacon, mushrooms, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fieldfare or 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 birds

  1. Pick the birds.

  2. Draw the birds.

  3. Singe the birds.

  4. Cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

  5. Soak the crumb of the French rolls in milk.

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine the soaked crumb with butter, grated lemon peel, chopped shallot, chopped parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and aromatic spices in a pan over heat.

  2. Cook until it forms a paste.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks.

  4. Use the mixture to stuff the birds.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with fried beef scallops.

  2. Arrange the birds in a circle.

  3. Place a slice of bacon between each bird.

  4. Prepare the mushrooms by cooking them in butter with gravy, Harvey sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt for 10 minutes.

  5. Thicken if necessary.

  6. Fill the center of the pie with the mushroom mixture.

  7. Cover with puff pastry.

  8. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fieldfares or blackbirds
Provide the main meat, which is rich and fatty and forms the pie's centre.
French rolls
Their crumb soaks up milk and binds the stuffing into a soft paste.
Egg yolks
Set when cooked, binding the stuffing and adding richness.
Streaky bacon
Melts as it cooks, adding fat and savoury flavour to the birds.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and absorb gravy, adding savoury depth to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and mushrooms.

The step that matters

Cook the stuffing until it forms a paste. Cooking the crumb with butter lets it thicken and dry slightly before the egg yolks go in. Adding raw yolks to a wet mixture can scramble unevenly or leave the stuffing loose.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, lemon, 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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