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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, forcemeat, and gravy, encased in short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 and bone the back and thighs of the hare.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the dish with short crust pastry.

  2. Place the venison in the center of the pastry and arrange the hare around it.

  3. Fill the hare joints with forcemeat mixed with butter, minced eschalots, and chopped liver, and fill any gaps with more forcemeat.

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

  5. Securely fasten the cover.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie for 2 hours in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

Make the jelly

  1. For jelly, boil 2 pounds of shin of beef in 1 quart of water until reduced by half, seasoning with ham, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and salt.

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

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

  4. Venison + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 provides the dish's core flavour.
Hare
Adds rich, gamey meat that is fleshed out and layered around the venison.
Butter
Enriches the forcemeat, keeping it moist and tender as it cooks.
Short crust pastry
Forms the sealed case that holds the filling and browns during baking.
Well-jellied gravy
Adds moisture that sets into jelly as the pie cools, keeping the meat juicy.

The step that matters

Securely fasten the cover. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the pie so the meat cooks in its own moisture rather than drying out in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

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

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