Skip to main content
Main

Pheasant Pie

A savory pie filled with pheasant meat, mushrooms, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pheasant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the crust

  1. Make a stiff dough with the flour and knead well.

  2. Keep the dough warm to prevent cracking.

  3. Shape the crust by hand or in a tin.

  4. Brush the outside with egg and decorate with cut-out paste flowers.

  5. Fill the crust with bran to maintain shape and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly browned.

  6. Remove the bran and brush the inside of the crust with a paste brush.

Prepare the pheasants

  1. Skin the cock pheasant carefully, keeping the head and wings attached.

  2. Remove the tail feathers and hang the pheasant until the next day.

  3. Pick the remaining feathers, clean the pheasants, and remove all bones.

  4. Cut the meat into pieces.

  5. Season the meat with mace, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. In a stewpan, combine the meat with mushrooms, truffles, and chopped shallot.

  2. Add the stock and stew until tender.

  3. Fill the pie with the mixture and let it sit overnight to set.

  4. In the morning, add any leftover mixture to the pie to prevent soaking into the crust.

  5. Optionally, add forcemeat balls to the filling before sealing the pie.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the crust its structure.
Pheasants
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth as the meat stews.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Stewing the meat until tender. Pheasant meat is lean and can turn dry or tough if not stewed gently long enough in the stock, so it must be checked for tenderness before the pie is filled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pheasant, nutmeg, pepper, veal, mushroom, truffle):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pheasant, nutmeg, pepper, veal, mushroom, truffle. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesPheasant SoupPheasant Soup25 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes