Skip to main content
Main

Pigeon Pie

A savory pie with pigeon, salt pork or ham, hard boiled eggs, butter, parsley, lemon juice, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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

  1. Par-boil the pigeon pieces for 10 minutes.

  2. Prepare a puff pastry.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, layer shreds of salt pork or ham.

  2. Add a layer of hard boiled eggs, buttered and peppered.

  3. Place the par-boiled pigeons on top, sprinkle with pepper and minced parsley, and squeeze lemon juice over them.

  4. Add pieces of butter rolled in flour on the breasts of the pigeons.

  5. Cover with slices of egg and then with shredded ham.

  6. Pour in some of the gravy from the par-boiling.

  7. Cover with the puff pastry, leaving a hole in the middle.

Bake

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

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and flavourful during par-boiling and baking.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they set and soften in the pie.
Salt pork or ham
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour that seasons the meat and filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the pastry and breasts as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that rises and browns in the oven.
Gravy from par-boiling pigeons
Adds moisture and savoury depth so the filling does not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Leaving a hole in the pastry lid. The vent lets steam escape while the filling heats. Without it, pressure can build under the crust, making it lift, split or turn soggy.

“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.

More pigeon pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 224 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes