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Hen Pie with Force-meat

A baked pie of hen and chicken stuffed with force-meat, topped with pastry and served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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 ↓

Hen Pie with Force-meat

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. Draw the hen.

  2. Singe the hen.

  3. Cut the hen down the back.

  4. Bone the hen.

  5. Bone the chicken.

  6. Flatten the hen and chicken with a rolling pin.

  7. Rub the hen and chicken with egg yolk.

  8. Season the hen and chicken with salt, white pepper, nutmeg, mace, and lemon zest.

  9. Lard the hen with bacon slices.

  10. Place the chicken inside the hen.

  11. Add a slice of boiled bacon or ham on top.

Stuff and shape

  1. Mix the force-meat ingredients.

  2. Stuff force-meat into the chicken.

  3. Sew up the hen.

  4. Rub the hen with butter.

  5. Place the hen in a dish.

  6. Form the remaining force-meat into balls.

  7. Arrange the force-meat balls around the hen, adding hard-boiled egg yolks.

Make the gravy

  1. Break the bones of the fowls.

  2. Make a gravy from the bones.

  3. Strain the remaining gravy.

  4. Thicken the gravy with 2 egg yolks.

  5. Add white wine to the gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add some gravy to the pie.

  2. Cover the pie with pastry.

  3. Decorate the pie with pastry birds and flowers.

  4. Bake the pie in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  5. Pour the gravy into the pie.

  6. Give the pie a gentle shake.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 seasoning and thicken the gravy, giving it body and a smooth set.
Butter
Fat that enriches the hen's skin and helps it brown in the oven.
Bacon
Fat that bastes the lean bird from within, adding savoury flavour and moisture.
Grated bread
Soaks up juices and fat in the force-meat, giving it a tender, moist texture.
Chicken livers
Add richness and depth of flavour to the force-meat stuffing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with 2 egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated and can scramble if the gravy boils. Adding them off the heat, or whisking in a little hot gravy first, keeps the gravy smooth and pourable.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, nutmeg, mace, lemon, ham, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, nutmeg, mace, lemon, ham, bread. 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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