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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a deep dish, combine the chopped rump steak, salt, and pepper.
Assemble
Place the cleaned pigeons on top of the steak mixture, along with the liver.
Add the yolk of hard-boiled eggs.
Cover the dish with puff pastry and decorate with small leaves.
Bake and serve
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
Serve with a sauce of your choice.
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.
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Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Pigeons
- Provide the rich, dark meat that forms the main body of the pie.
- Rump steak
- Adds savory beef flavor and becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the dish.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
- Puff pastry
- Its layers of fat and dough puff and turn flaky and golden in a hot oven.
The step that matters
Bake until golden brown. Puff pastry needs a hot oven to rise and crisp. If it is underbaked, the layers stay pale and soggy, and the filling may not cook through.
“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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