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Pigeon Pie

Pigeon Pie is a baked pie with pigeons stuffed with ham, cracker or asparagus, butter, salt, pepper, and covered with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the pigeons with the grated ham, cracker (or asparagus), salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Place the stuffed pigeons in a dish and pour in milk and water until nearly covered.

  4. Cover the dish with pie crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour.

  2. Parboil the pigeons for 20 minutes to make them tender.

  3. Use the boiling water in the pie.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

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 long, moist cooking.
Cold ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the stuffing.
Cracker
Soaks up juices and helps hold the stuffing together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffed birds.
Milk
Adds richness and moisture to the liquid surrounding the pigeons.

The step that matters

Parboil the pigeons. Parboiling partly softens the tough muscle fibers and connective tissue before the long bake, helping the birds become tender. The cooking water is then used in the pie, keeping flavor and moisture in the dish.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, butter, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, butter, milk. 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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