Skip to main content
Main

Fieldfare or Blackbird Pie

A savory pie made with fieldfares or blackbirds, French roll crumbs, butter, lemon peel, shallot, parsley, spices, mushrooms, bacon, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Pick, draw, and singe the birds. Cut off the legs and wings, tucking the thigh bones inside.

  2. Soak the crumbs of the French rolls in milk. In a pan, melt butter and add lemon peel, shallot, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and spices. Stir until it forms a paste.

  3. Add the egg yolks to the stuffing and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a pie dish with fried beef scallops. Arrange the birds in a circle and place a slice of bacon between each.

  2. Prepare the mushrooms in a pan with butter, gravy, Harvey sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt. Stew for 10 minutes, then thicken if using gravy.

  3. Fill the center of the pie with the mushroom mixture. Cover with puff pastry.

  4. 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
Provide the main meat, which is the filling's core flavor and substance.
French rolls
Crumbed and soaked in milk to bind the stuffing and give it a soft, moist texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the stuffing, helping it hold together when cooked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory depth to the filling when stewed with gravy.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it cooks around the birds.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the mushroom mixture becomes saucy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Thicken the mushroom mixture. Flour or gravy must be cooked into the stewed mushrooms so they thicken. If the filling stays thin, it will run out and make the pastry soggy.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes