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Wild Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with wild pigeon pieces, bacon, boiled eggs, and a butter-flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wild 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 the filling

  1. Parboil the pigeon pieces until partially cooked.

  2. In a dish, layer the pigeon pieces, bacon, and boiled eggs alternately.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt a good lump of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the melted butter with flour to create a roux.

  3. Stir the roux into the gravy.

  4. Boil the gravy until thickened.

Bake

  1. Pour the thickened gravy over the layered ingredients in the dish.

  2. Cover the dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for over an 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.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Wild pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during parboiling and long baking.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the meat and gravy as the pie bakes.
Boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they sit among the meat.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Combines with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy until thickened. Flour only thickens fully when the roux is cooked in hot liquid long enough to swell its starch. Gravy that is too thin will stay watery and run out of the pie during baking.

“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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