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Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A savory pie filled with fieldfares or blackbirds, bacon, mushrooms, and a rich gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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, draw, and singe the birds, then cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

Make the stuffing

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

  2. Combine the soaked crumb with butter, lemon peel, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and aromatic spices in a saucepan.

  3. Stir over heat until it forms a compact paste.

  4. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Arrange the birds in a circular order on the scallops.

  3. Place a slice of bacon between each bird.

  4. In a saucepan, combine mushrooms, butter, gravy, Harvey sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

  5. Stir and stew for 10 minutes.

  6. If using gravy, thicken it with butter kneaded with flour.

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

  8. Cover with puff pastry.

  9. 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

Birds (fieldfares or blackbirds)
Provide the main meat, which is rich and fatty and cooks tender under pastry.
French rolls
Their crumb soaks up milk and binds the stuffing into a compact paste.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and help it set as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stuffing and mushroom mixture.
Streaky bacon
Melts fat over the birds, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savour to the filling as they stew.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with butter kneaded with flour. Kneading butter with flour makes a roux-like thickener that blends in smoothly. Added without it, the gravy stays thin and can run out of the pie.

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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