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Pigeon Pie

A savory pie made with pigeon, lemon, red pepper, and a soda biscuit crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Place the pigeon pieces in a saucepan and cover with hot water.

  2. Add lemon juice, red pepper, and salt.

  3. Cook slowly until tender, replenishing water as needed.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the pigeons and gravy in a deep baking dish.

  2. Cover with soda biscuit crust and brush with beaten egg.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is golden.

  4. Serve in the baking dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Flour and butter 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
Supply the meat, which becomes tender through slow cooking in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the flavor of the gravy.
Egg
Brushed on the crust to promote browning and a glossy golden finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the savory flavor of the pigeon and gravy.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender, replenishing water as needed. Gentle, low-heat simmering breaks down the connective tissue in pigeon meat, while a hard boil toughens the proteins. Keeping the pieces covered in liquid prevents them from drying out and scorching.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, egg, biscuit):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, egg, biscuit. 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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