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A Good Common English Game Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 coarse sea salt, cayenne, pounded mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Cut the hare into joints.

  4. Bone the back and thighs of the hare.

  5. Fill the hare joints with forcemeat No. 1 mixed with butter, minced eschalots, and chopped liver.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the dish with a rich short crust.

  2. Place the venison in the center of the crust.

  3. Arrange the hare around the venison.

  4. Fill any gaps with more forcemeat.

  5. Add a few spoons of well-jellied gravy.

  6. Cover the pie securely.

  7. Decorate if desired.

Make the jelly and bake

  1. To make jelly, boil 2 pounds of shin of beef in 1 quart of water until reduced by half.

  2. Season the jelly with ham, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and salt.

  3. Bake for 2 hours at 400°F (200°C).

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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 centre of the pie and carries the spiced rub into the filling.
Hare
Provides rich, gamey meat whose joints are filled and set around the venison.
Forcemeat
Binds the filling and keeps the lean game meat moist during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the forcemeat and keeps the filling moist and tender.
Rich short crust (in the method)
Flour and butter form a sturdy, tender case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Well-jellied gravy
Sets into a jelly that fills gaps and keeps the pie moist as it cools.

The step that matters

Cover the pie securely. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside so the lean game stays moist; a gap lets the juices escape and the meat dry out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

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

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