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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeons, vegetables, and a thickened sauce topped with tea biscuit batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the birds

  1. Clean and truss the pigeons or squabs.

  2. Place them in a kettle and nearly cover with boiling water.

  3. Add peppercorns, onion, carrot, parsley, and celery.

  4. Cook slowly until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the squabs and strain the liquid.

  2. Thicken the strained liquid with cooked butter and flour.

  3. Remove the meat from the birds and cover with the thickened sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered baking dish.

  2. Top with tea biscuit batter.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigeons or squabs
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Butter
Cooked with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with cooked butter to thicken the strained cooking liquid into a sauce.
Tea biscuit batter
Forms a soft, golden crust over the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender. Gentle simmering keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the connective tissue in the birds softens gradually without the meat toughening or drying out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (squab, onion, carrot, parsley, celery, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against squab, onion, carrot, parsley, celery, butter, 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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