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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, dressing, gravy, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pigeon 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 pigeons

  1. Stuff each pigeon with dressing.

  2. Loosen the joints with a knife without separating them.

  3. Place pigeons in a stew-pan and cover with water.

Make the gravy

  1. Cook until nearly tender, then season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour, then remove and cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and line the sides with pie crust.

  2. Layer sliced hard-boiled eggs, pigeons, and gravy in the dish until full.

  3. Cover with a crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the initial stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it holds together rather than running out of the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and richness between the meat and gravy layers.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the seasoned gravy.
Rich pie crust
Forms the lining and top crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour, then remove and cool. Flour thickens the liquid as it heats and sets as it cools; if the gravy is too thin, it will run out of the pie and leave the filling soggy, so it should be thick before layering.

“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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