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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, forcemeat, and jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 350°F (175°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 the venison and trim it to fit the dish.

  2. Rub the meat with a mixture of salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Cut the hare into joints, remove the back and thighs, and fill them with forcemeat mixed with extra butter, minced shallots, and chopped liver.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the dish with a rich short crust, place the venison in the center, and arrange the hare around it.

  2. Fill the spaces with more forcemeat and add a few spoonfuls of jelly gravy.

  3. Securely fasten the cover, decorate if desired, and bake for 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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 + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the main meat, whose lean flesh becomes tender and savoury during long, gentle baking.
Hare
Adds rich, gamey meat flavour, and its filled joints stay moist within the pie.
Forcemeat
Adds moisture and richness, filling the gaps so the meats stay juicy as the pie bakes.
Flour
Forms the rich short crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape while baking.
Jelly gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth, keeping the filling from drying out during baking.

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 and stays tender rather than drying out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, nutmeg, butter, shallot, liver, flour. 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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