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Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A savory pie filled with fieldfares or blackbirds, crumbed French rolls, mushrooms, bacon, and a rich gravy sauce.

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. Clean, draw, and singe the birds, then cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

  2. Soak the crumb of the French rolls in milk, then combine in a pan with butter, lemon peel, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and spices. Stir over heat until it forms a paste, then mix in the egg yolks.

  3. Stuff the birds with the mixture.

Assemble the pie

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

  2. Arrange the birds in a circle, placing a slice of bacon between each.

  3. Prepare the mushrooms in a pan with butter, gravy, Harvey sauce, Cayenne, and salt, stewing for 10 minutes. Thicken the gravy if used instead of sauce with the butter‑flour mixture.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours before serving.

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

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
French rolls
Soaked and crumbed, they add body and absorb moisture to form the stuffing paste.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a tender texture.
Milk
Softens the bread crumb so it blends into a smooth, moist paste.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour into the gravy-based filling as they stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter-flour mixture. Kneaded butter and flour thickens the liquid as it heats, so the filling becomes glossy and cohesive rather than watery and runny in 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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