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Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A savory pie filled with fieldfares or blackbirds, stuffed with a crumbed French roll mixture, mushrooms, bacon, and beef, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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. Cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

  2. Soak the crumbs of the French rolls in milk.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add the soaked crumbs, lemon peel, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and aromatic spices. Stir until it forms a paste.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks. Use this stuffing to fill the birds.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pie dish, cover the bottom with scallops of fried beef. Arrange the birds in a circular order, placing a slice of bacon between each.

  2. Prepare the mushrooms by cooking them in a pan with butter, gravy, Harvey sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt for 10 minutes. If using gravy, thicken it with a pat of butter kneaded with flour.

  3. Fill the center of the pie with the mushroom mixture. Cover with puff pastry.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven 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

Game birds
Provide the main meat, whose lean flesh is the body of the pie.
French rolls
Soaked crumbs bind the stuffing and keep it moist as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and help it set when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the stuffing hold together.
Streaky bacon
Melting fat bastes the birds and adds savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the pie for 1.5 hours at 400°F (200°C). The birds must cook through in the filling while the puff pastry rises and browns. Too little time leaves the meat underdone, while too much dries out the birds and pastry.

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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