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Pheasant Pie

A savory pie made with pheasants stuffed with forcemeat and baked with bacon and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Pheasant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Bone the pheasants carefully.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing grated bread, pounded veal, fat bacon, and minced beef suet in equal quantities, adding grated lean ham.

  3. Season the mixture with truffles, nutmeg, mace, pepper, salt, and garlic.

  4. Bind the forcemeat with the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stuff part of the forcemeat inside the pheasants.

  6. Fry the stuffed pheasants for a few minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the pheasants in a deep dish lined with fat bacon slices and some forcemeat at the bottom.

  2. Add brandy to the dish.

  3. Add more forcemeat to the dish.

  4. Cover the dish with fat bacon slices.

  5. If using a dish, cover it with coarse paste.

  6. Bake for 4 to 5 hours.

  7. Remove the coarse paste.

Top and serve

  1. Top with rich puff paste.

  2. Bake until the puff paste is golden.

  3. Serve.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Pheasant + beeftop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long slow bake.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when sliced.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture that keep the meat and forcemeat juicy.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich during baking.
Grated bread
Soaks up juices and gives the forcemeat a light, tender body.
Pounded veal
Adds a soft, binding meat texture to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Remove the coarse paste before adding the puff paste. The coarse paste is only a covering for the long bake. Removing it lets the top be sealed with puff paste that can brown properly and turn golden and crisp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, bread, veal, beef, ham, truffle, nutmeg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, veal, beef, ham, truffle, nutmeg. 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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