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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, and forcemeat, baked in a short crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Good Common English 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 meat

  1. Remove the flesh from the upper side of the neck of venison and trim it to fit the dish.

  2. Rub the venison with a mixture of coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, ground mace, and ground nutmeg.

  3. Cut the hare into joints, bone the back and thighs, and fill them with forcemeat No. 1 mixed with extra butter, minced onion, and chopped liver.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the dish with a rich short crust, place the venison in the center, and arrange the hare around it.

  2. Fill any gaps with more forcemeat and add a few spoonfuls of well-jellied gravy.

  3. Securely fasten the cover, decorate if desired, and bake the pie for 2 hours in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

Use the leftovers

  1. Use the remnants and bones of the hare and venison to make soup or gravy, adding some to the pie if desired.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Neck of venison
Provides the main meat, whose flesh becomes tender and rich during the long bake.
Young hare
Adds a second meat with deeper, gamey flavour that fills the pie's gaps.
Forcemeat no. 1
Forms a moist, savoury stuffing that keeps the meat from drying out as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the forcemeat and gives moisture and a rich mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the rich short crust that holds the pie together.
Raw liver of the hare
Contributes richness and depth of flavour to the forcemeat filling.

The step that matters

Securely fasten the cover. A tight seal traps steam and moisture inside during the two-hour bake, keeping the meat juicy rather than dry.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, mace, nutmeg, butter, liver, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, mace, nutmeg, butter, liver, 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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