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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, forcemeat, butter, eschalots, liver, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 upper side 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, adding butter, minced eschalots, and chopped liver.

Assemble and bake

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

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

  3. Securely fasten the cover, decorate if desired, and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for two hours.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Pepper and mace 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

What each ingredient does

Venison neck
Forms the main meat of the pie, staying moist and tender during the long bake.
Hare
Adds rich, gamey meat that fills the dish around the venison.
Forcemeat
Adds moisture and savory richness to the hare and fills the gaps around the meats.
Short crust pastry
Forms the sturdy enclosing crust that holds in juices and browns in the oven.
Well-jellied gravy
Adds moisture and body that sets as the pie cools, keeping slices intact.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the meat and forcemeat.

The step that matters

Securely fasten the cover. A tight seal keeps moisture and aroma inside during the two-hour bake, so the meat cooks gently in its own juices rather than drying out.

Swap the mace

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

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

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