Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with puff pastry, veal cutlet, pigeons, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, and veal broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Make a fine puff pastry and lay a border around a large dish.

Assemble the pie

  1. Cover the bottom with a veal cutlet or tender steak, and season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and mace.

  2. Prepare the pigeons and place a small lump of butter inside each, seasoning with black pepper and salt.

  3. Lay the pigeons breast down in the dish and add the sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Add more butter and some veal broth, then cover the whole with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for an hour and a half.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and rich during the long, gentle baking.
Veal cutlet or tender steak
Lines the base of the dish, adding savoury meat flavour and moisture to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling as they set and mingle with the meat juices.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and keeps the meat moist as it bakes.
Veal broth
Adds moisture and savoury depth, forming a flavourful jelly-like juice in the pie.

The step that matters

Covering the pigeons with pastry after adding broth. Pastry must seal the dish fully so steam and juices stay inside, keeping the meat moist and the pastry from drying out or leaking during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, butter, egg. 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.

More pigeon pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 224 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes