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Snipe Pie

A savory pie made with snipe, beef forcemeat, and a sauce of soup, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Snipe Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the snipe

  1. Parboil the snipe in bouillon and white wine with grated onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Mix beef, fat pork, butter, and soaked roll crumbs to make forcemeat.

  2. Season the forcemeat with onion, pepper, allspice, cloves, mushrooms, and gherkins.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with forcemeat.

  2. Place the snipe inside with some broth and a small piece of butter.

  3. Cover with more forcemeat.

  4. Bake for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine soup, white wine, water, and butter rolled in flour to make the sauce.

  2. Stir until smooth and bring to a boil.

  3. Slice the pie and serve with pickled gherkins or lemon.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Snipe
Forms the main filling, cooked gently in bouillon and wine before baking.
Beef
Provides the bulk and meaty body of the forcemeat.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and the sauce.
Soaked roll crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and help it hold together when sliced.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and body-rich.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until smooth before boiling. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump if added to it unevenly; stirring while the butter and flour melt in disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly when it boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, nutmeg, beef, pork, butter, allspice. 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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