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A Good Common English Game Pie

A savory pie filled with venison, hare, forcemeat, and spices, baked in a short crust.

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 young hare into joints, bone the back and thighs, and fill them with forcemeat No. 1, adding butter, minced eschalots, and chopped liver.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Fill any vacant spaces with more forcemeat and add a few spoons of well-jellied gravy.

  3. Securely fasten the cover and bake the pie for 2 hours in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C).

Stock, jelly and extras

  1. Use the remnants and bones of the hare and venison to make soup or gravy.

  2. For jelly, boil 2 pounds of shin of beef in 1 quart of water, reducing it by half and seasoning with ham, peppercorns, doves, mace, and salt.

  3. Use 1.5 pounds of flour for the crust, which can be laid around the sides of the dish if preferred.

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 neck
Forms the main meat centrepiece, becoming tender and juicy during the long, slow bake.
Young hare
Provides rich, gamey meat that is stuffed and bakes into the pie's filling.
Forcemeat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the lean game meat tender as it cooks.
Rich short crust
Forms the buttery pastry shell that holds the meat and jelly together.
Well-jellied gravy
Adds moisture and body, setting into a savoury jelly as the pie cools.

The step that matters

Securely fasten the cover. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside, so the meat stays moist and the gravy sets properly 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, 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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