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Pigeon Pie

A baked pie filled with quartered pigeons, boiled eggs, minced giblets, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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 pigeon

  1. Clean, wash, and cut the pigeons into quarters.

  2. Wipe dry and fry lightly in butter or dripping.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a greased pudding-dish, layer some pieces of pigeon.

  2. Cover with a mixture of chopped boiled eggs and minced giblets.

  3. Add more pigeon pieces and another layer of the mixture.

  4. Stir 2 tablespoons of butter rolled in flour into the hot giblet water, season, and pour enough to half cover the birds.

  5. Cover with a thick crust, making a slit in the middle.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  2. Glaze with beaten egg just before removing from the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 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

Pigeons
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the slow baking under the crust.
Chopped boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling layers.
Giblets
Add savoury depth, and their boiling water becomes the sauce for the filling.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the giblet water into a sauce and adds richness.
Good pastry
Forms a sealed crust that holds in steam and moisture while the pie bakes.
Beaten egg
Gives the crust a glossy, golden browned surface.

The step that matters

Pouring in the giblet liquor. The liquid should only half cover the birds. Too much makes the pie watery, while too little leaves the meat dry, since the pigeon needs moisture to stay tender 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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