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Game Pie

Game pie is a baked dish of game birds, potatoes, and gravy in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Game 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. Clean and halve the birds.

  2. Boil the birds in 3 quarts of water, skimming frequently.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, onion, and cloves.

  4. Add the diced salt pork and boil until tender, ensuring the birds are covered with water.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the broth with 2 tablespoons of browned flour and let it boil.

  2. Stir in the butter and remove from heat to cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a buttered pudding dish with the pie crust.

  2. Layer the birds and potatoes in the dish, alternating until full.

  3. Pour the gravy over the layers and cover with the top crust, cutting a slit in the center.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 through long simmering in the broth.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it renders during boiling.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth into a gravy that binds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished gravy, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Potatoes
Add starchy bulk that absorbs gravy and helps fill the pie.
Rich pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a golden top.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth and let it cool before filling. Flour must be cooked in the boiling broth to thicken it fully and avoid a raw floury taste. Cooling the gravy before assembly keeps the crust from becoming soggy and the pie from being too runny when baked.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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