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Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A savory pie filled with fieldfares or blackbirds, puff pastry, and a mushroom gravy.

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 and stuffing

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the birds.

  2. Cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

  3. Soak the crumb of the French rolls in milk.

  4. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the soaked crumbs, lemon peel, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and aromatic spices. Stir until it forms a paste.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks.

  6. Use this stuffing to fill the birds.

Assemble the pie

  1. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with fried beef scallops.

  2. Arrange the birds in a circular order and place a slice of bacon between each bird.

  3. Fill the center with prepared mushrooms.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mushrooms, butter, gravy or brown sauce, Harvey sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt. Stew for 10 minutes.

  2. If using gravy, thicken it with butter and flour.

  3. Cover the pie with puff pastry and bake 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

Fieldfares or blackbirds
Form the main meat filling of the pie.
French rolls
Their soaked crumb binds the stuffing into a soft paste.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and sauce.
Gravy or brown sauce
Provides liquid and savoury depth to the mushroom sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the birds.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter so it swells and thickens the liquid smoothly, rather than leaving lumps or a raw starchy taste.

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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