Name: Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: 3 young pigeons; 2 teaspoons salt; 1 lb steak; 1 teaspoon pepper; 1 pint stock; flaky pastry; 2 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Pepper and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pigeon 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 and fill

Prepare the steak as for beef‑steak pie.
Cut the pigeons into quarters and lay them at the bottom of a pie dish.
Add the steak on top and sprinkle with the remaining seasoning.
Cut the hard‑boiled eggs into eight pieces each and pile them on top.
Half fill the dish with stock.

Cover and bake

Cover and decorate with pastry.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.
Scald the feet of the pigeons and stick them into the pastry after baking for about 1 hour.

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.

Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Young pigeons: Dark meat that gives the filling a rich, gamey flavour.
Steak: Connective tissue softens during long baking, making the filling tender.
Stock: Adds liquid that moistens the meat as it cooks in the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs: Firm, mild pieces that add texture and body to the filling.
Flaky pastry: Fat between thin layers puffs and separates them, giving a flaky, golden crust.

“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.