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Goose Pie

A savory pie filled with goose, turkey, fowl, ham, tongue, and spices, baked in a buttered paper crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Goose 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 pie

  1. Prepare a strong raised crust with thick sides.

  2. Season the goose, turkey, and fowl with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Layer the goose in a dish with the breast side down, followed by the turkey, ham, tongue, and fowl.

  4. Cover with bits of ham or bacon.

Shape and seal

  1. Shape the pie in an oval form, ensuring the sides stand 1½ inches above the meat.

  2. Place the top on the pie and make a hole in the center.

  3. Brush the outside with beaten egg whites and bind with three layers of buttered paper.

  4. Seal the top with the same method.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  2. Remove the paper and pour melted butter through the funnel into 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Goose
Provides the rich meat that forms the main body of the pie.
Turkey
Adds more meat to the filling, bulking out the layers of the pie.
Melted butter
Poured in after baking, it adds richness and moisture to the cooked meat.
Beaten egg whites
Brushed on the crust, they help it set and brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sealing the top and binding with buttered paper. A tight seal keeps juices and steam inside the pie so the meat cooks gently and stays moist. Gaps let liquid escape and can leave the meat dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pepper, clove, nutmeg, ham, egg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pepper, clove, nutmeg, ham, egg, butter. 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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