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Rook Pie

A pie made from rooks, seasoned with salt and pepper, baked with gravy or water and butter, then finished with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rook Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw and skin the rooks, then soak them in cold water for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Remove the back bones and wash the birds.

  3. Season the rooks with salt and pepper, then pack them closely into a pie dish.

Bake and finish

  1. Add ½ pint of gravy or water and place ½ pound of butter on top.

  2. Cover with flour and water paste and bake for 2 hours.

  3. The next day, remove the coarse layer and cover with puff paste, then bake until done.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rooks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long slow bake.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the meat moist during baking.
Flour and water paste
Forms a covering crust that encloses the birds while they bake.

“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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