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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, forcemeat, and spices, baked in a short crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg 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 ↓

A Good Common English Game 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 meat

  1. Remove the flesh from the best end of the neck of venison and trim it to fit the dish.

  2. Rub the venison with a mixture of coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, pounded mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Cut the hare into joints, bone the back and thighs, and fill them with forcemeat No. 1 mixed with ½ cup butter, minced eschalots, and chopped liver.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the dish with a rich short crust, place the venison in the center, and arrange the hare around it.

  2. Fill any vacant spaces with more forcemeat and add a few spoons of well-jellied gravy.

  3. Securely fasten the cover, optionally ornament it, and bake for 2 hours in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

Use the remains

  1. Use the remnants and bones of the hare and venison to make soup or gravy.

  2. For jelly, boil 2 pounds of shin of beef in 1 quart of water until reduced by half, seasoning with ham, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and salt.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Forms the main meaty filling and, with the hare, gives the pie its rich flavour.
Hare
Supplies gamey flavour and dense, rich meat that holds its shape during baking.
Butter
Enriches the forcemeat, adding fat that keeps it moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the rich short crust that encloses the filling and gives the pie its structure.
Forcemeat
Fills the gaps around the meat, adding moisture and a tender, binding texture.

The step that matters

Bake for 2 hours at 400°F (200°C). The cover must be sealed tightly so steam and juices stay inside, keeping the meat moist. A well-heated oven sets the crust quickly, and the long bake gives dense game meat time to cook through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, liver, flour, ham):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, liver, flour, ham. 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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