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Chicken, Rook, or Rabbit Pie

A savory pie filled with chicken or rabbit, ham or bacon, forcemeat balls, eggs, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Chicken, Rook, or Rabbit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut up the fowls.

  2. If using rabbits, cut the legs short.

  3. Soak the giblets in milk.

  4. Remove the liver and back.

  5. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare gravy from veal or mutton bones.

  2. Season the gravy with herbs and onions.

  3. Clarify the gravy with egg whites after removing the meat.

  4. Strain the gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chicken, ham, forcemeat balls, and hard-boiled eggs in a pie dish.

  2. Add a little water if baking in a dish. Omit water for a raised crust.

  3. Fill the pie dish with gravy. Use cold clarified gravy if using a raised crust.

  4. Use puff pastry for the crust.

  5. Bake until golden.

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

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the pie.
Egg whites
Clarify the gravy by collecting particles so it becomes clear.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced richness and body inside the pie.
Veal or mutton bones
Give the gravy depth and gelatin that sets when cold.
Puff pastry
Forms the crust that bakes up flaky and golden.

The step that matters

Clarify the gravy with egg whites after removing the meat. Egg whites bind cloudy particles as they heat and rise, so straining leaves a clear gravy. Skipping or rushing this leaves a cloudy filling, and a raised crust needs the gravy cold and set to hold its shape.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mace, nutmeg, pepper, ham, egg, veal):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, pepper, ham, egg, veal. 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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