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A Woodcock Pie to Be Eaten Cold

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

A Woodcock Pie to Be Eaten Cold

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick the woodcocks and set the entrails aside. Truss the woodcocks as for roasting.

  2. Flatten the breastbone and broil the woodcocks over clear charcoal until cooked. Let them cool.

  3. Lard the cooled woodcocks all over.

  4. Pound the bacon in a mortar and mix it with the bruised livers of the woodcocks and sweet basil leaves.

  5. Finely chop the entrails and mix them with the bacon and liver mixture.

  6. Prepare the pie by placing some stuffing at the bottom, then fill the birds with the remaining stuffing, adding pounded bacon and fresh butter, along with a pinch of mace, pepper, and salt.

  7. When the pie is nearly full, place a round cutlet of veal on top and layer thin slices of bacon over it.

  8. Cover the pie with a lid and let it stand for three to four hours, depending on the number of birds used.

  9. Once baked, allow the pie to cool 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. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Basil + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together398 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, basil, butter, pepper, veal):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, basil, butter, pepper, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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