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Beef Steak and Pigeon Pie

A savory pie filled with beef steak and pigeon pieces, onions, herbs, and lime, topped with pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Steak and Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steak into pieces 3 inches long, 2.5 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick.

  2. Cut each pigeon into 4 pieces and wash well.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the sliced onions in ghee.

  2. Dredge the steak and pigeon pieces with flour and add them to the ghee and onions; fry for a while.

  3. Add pepper, salt, sweet herbs, and some lime rinds.

  4. If using glaze, warm it and mix it into the dish; otherwise, make soup with beef and use that.

  5. Set the mixture on low heat and simmer until the meat is tender.

  6. Remove from heat and let cool; if desired, add oysters, more gravy, and lime juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a dish lined with pastry.

  2. Cover with pastry crust and bake after brushing with egg yolk or a paste of flour and milk.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Lime + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides meaty body and rich flavour that the filling is built around.
Pigeon
Adds tender meat and deep gamey flavour to the filling as it simmers.
Onions
Soften and sweeten in ghee, forming the aromatic base of the filling.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns and helps thicken the gravy.
Ghee
Fat for frying that browns the onions and meat and carries flavour.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and bakes into a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Pigeon and beef are tough until their connective tissue breaks down over long, gentle heat. Simmering on low heat keeps the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the meat and reduce the gravy too fast.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, lime, oyster, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, lime, oyster, pepper, 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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